Microsoft Ads
The paid channel most advertisers import once and then forget
Microsoft Advertising is usually the second account: created by pressing import, checked twice, then left running for years. It is a different auction with a different audience, and it is the only place outside LinkedIn itself where you can bid against company, industry and job function.
Why it goes unstaffed
Four reasons this account never gets anyone’s attention
It is smaller, so it is never anyone’s priority
A channel that represents a modest share of spend rarely gets a share of attention that matches its potential. It becomes the account you open when something breaks, which means the only changes it ever receives are reactive ones.
The auction has a different set of bidders
Fewer advertisers competing on a term changes what that term is worth. Some keywords that are priced out of reach elsewhere are viable here, and some that perform elsewhere are not. That is a property of who shows up to bid, not a discount anyone can promise you.
It carries targeting that exists nowhere else
Microsoft Advertising lets you set bid adjustments against LinkedIn company, industry and job function. For businesses that sell to a defined set of employers or roles, that is a lever no other search platform offers.
The audience arrives through workplace defaults
A meaningful share of this traffic comes from people using machines configured by an employer rather than by themselves. That skews the population towards work-hours research and business decisions, which suits some advertisers and not others.
Where the two diverge
What is genuinely different once the campaigns are live
The interfaces look similar enough that people assume the platforms behave the same. The places they diverge are the places imported accounts quietly lose money.
| Dimension | Google Ads | Microsoft Advertising |
|---|---|---|
| Depth of the auction | Most commercial categories have a deep field of bidders, and the field sets the floor | Fewer bidders in many categories, which changes what a term is worth rather than guaranteeing a saving |
| Who is searching | The broad default across personal and work devices alike | Weighted towards people on machines and browsers configured by an employer |
| Targeting you cannot replicate | Rich in-market and affinity data across an enormous property set | LinkedIn company, industry and job function as bid adjustments, available on no other search engine |
| How targeting behaves | Audience targeting can be set to observation or targeting, so it can genuinely narrow reach | LinkedIn profile targeting is bid-only, so it raises bids for matches and excludes nobody |
| Data volume for decisions | Statistical significance usually arrives quickly in a funded account | Smaller samples mean longer read windows and more patience before acting on a result |
| What the setup inherits | Built by hand, so every setting was chosen at some point by someone | Frequently created by import, so settings exist because they copied across rather than because anyone chose them |
The import trap
Four ways a copied account stops being a good copy
Importing is genuinely useful. It is the fastest way to get from nothing to running, and a scheduled import keeps structural changes in sync. The failure is treating the import as the finished job.
- Nothing was rebuilt after the first import.
- Microsoft is explicit that not all information is imported and that you should review your campaigns afterwards and add the missing information back. In practice, an account is imported on a Tuesday, nobody reviews it, and the gaps stay gaps for years. The account then gets judged on performance it was never set up to produce.
- Budgets came across at the volume of a much larger auction.
- A daily budget sized for one platform means something different on another. Sometimes it sits mostly unspent, which looks like failure but is really a signal about available volume. Sometimes it spends fully on the wrong half of the account. The import can adjust budgets by a percentage on the way in, and almost nobody sets it.
- The negative keyword list is another platform’s history.
- Negatives are a record of the irrelevant searches that actually happened. Imported wholesale, they block searches that may never occur here while leaving this platform’s own irrelevant queries running. Reading the search terms report in the account you are actually spending in is unglamorous and it is the single highest-value hour in most Microsoft accounts.
- Network and audience settings were never opened.
- Search partners, the Audience Network and device behaviour are separate decisions with separate consequences, and an imported account has whatever the defaults gave it. That is fine as a starting state and indefensible as a permanent one, because it means part of the spend is going somewhere nobody chose.
Order of work
What we do before we touch a bid
Establish what the account actually is
Find out whether it was built or imported, when the last import ran, what the import options were set to, and which settings are inherited rather than chosen. This changes the diagnosis completely.
You get: Account provenance and settings audit
Rebuild what did not carry across
Assets, extensions, exclusions and campaign settings that the import did not bring. This is the step Microsoft asks you to do and the step that is nearly always skipped.
You get: Gap list, closed
Re-decide the import schedule
Choose whether the import keeps running, what it is allowed to overwrite, and whether it should be allowed to delete entities removed upstream. A recurring import that silently reverts your local changes is worse than no import at all.
You get: Documented import policy
Read this platform’s own search data
Build negatives, match type decisions and new keyword candidates from the search terms that happened here. Expect the list to diverge from Google within weeks.
You get: Platform-specific keyword and negative sets
Apply the targeting Google cannot offer
Where the buyer is defined by employer, industry or role, layer LinkedIn profile targeting as bid adjustments, with the understanding that it does not narrow the audience on its own.
You get: Profile targeting layer with stated assumptions
Set a decision point
Agree in advance what result would justify more budget, what would justify less, and how long the read takes given the volume available. Then hold to it.
You get: Written continue-or-stop criteria
Scope
What ongoing management covers
- Account and import audit, including which settings were chosen and which were inherited
- Campaign structure reviewed against how you actually sell, not how the source account was organised
- Search term review on a fixed cadence, with negatives built from this platform’s data
- Keyword and match type decisions made on local evidence rather than transferred assumptions
- Ad copy written for this audience, including tests that do not exist in the Google account
- LinkedIn company, industry and job function targeting where the buyer definition supports it
- Search partner and Audience Network settings reviewed as separate decisions
- Location, device and schedule adjustments based on observed behaviour here
- Budget pacing reviewed against available volume rather than against a target spend
- Reporting that states plainly whether the channel is earning its management
Questions
What advertisers ask about Microsoft Advertising
Is Microsoft Advertising worth running if we already have Google Ads?
Usually it is worth testing properly, and sometimes it is not worth continuing. The honest answer depends on whether your buyers are people who use whatever browser and search engine their employer installed, and whether your category has enough query volume to produce readable data in a reasonable time.
We would rather run a defined test with a stated decision point than add a channel because it is available. If the volume is not there after a fair test, we will tell you to stop.
We import from Google automatically. Why would we need anyone to manage it?
Because an import is a copy, not a decision. Microsoft says openly that not all information is imported and asks you to review the campaigns afterwards and add the missing pieces back, and that is the step that gets skipped.
Beyond the mechanics, the copied account inherits judgements made for a different auction: budgets sized for Google volume, bid adjustments tuned to a different device mix, negative lists built from search terms that nobody here ever typed.
What is LinkedIn profile targeting and what can it actually do?
It lets you set bid adjustments against a person’s LinkedIn company, industry or job function, and Microsoft Advertising is the only platform outside LinkedIn where you can do it.
It is bid-only, not target-and-bid. Adding a company raises your bid for people who match it; it does not stop anyone else seeing the ad. There are limits too, including a cap on how many companies you can apply to a single campaign or ad group, and not every company, industry or job function is available.
Do the same keywords work here?
Some do and some do not, and the only way to find out is to read this platform’s own search term data rather than assume the Google list transfers.
The searcher population is different enough that match types, negatives and even ad copy angles need to be judged again. We treat the imported keyword list as a hypothesis, not an inheritance.
Can you tell us what it will cost per lead here?
No. Click prices and lead costs are set by who else is bidding in your category, how they are bidding and what your landing page does with the traffic, and none of those are things any agency controls.
What we will do is set a budget, define what a fair test looks like before it starts, and report the result plainly whether or not it flatters the recommendation.
Find out whether your second search account is worth staffing
We will look at how the account was created, what the import left behind and whether there is enough volume in your category to justify managing it properly. If the answer is no, that is a useful answer.
If we don't deliver the work we agreed to deliver for reasons within our control, you don't pay for the undelivered work. Read our guarantee
Related
Where to go next
- how we run paid channelsWhere this sits among the other buys.
- the Google account it usually mirrorsThe source account most imports come from.
- automated Google campaign typesAutomation behaves differently on each platform.
- B2B organic visibility
- tracking configured per platformTwo ad platforms will not agree unless the tracking is deliberate.
- filling a business pipeline
Last updated · Reviewed by Zubair Afzal