Using Microsoft Advertising means creating an account at ads.microsoft.com, installing the UET tag on your site, then either importing your Google Ads campaigns or building new ones for search, shopping or the Microsoft Audience Network. Ads appear on Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, MSN, Microsoft Edge and Copilot surfaces. The process takes a few hours if you already run Google Ads, and about a day if you start fresh.
Microsoft Advertising is often treated as an afterthought, yet its audience skews toward desktop users and professionals, and click costs in many sectors are lower than on Google. Here is the setup we follow, step by step.
Step 1: Create the account
Go to ads.microsoft.com and sign up with a Microsoft account. Choose the business name, country, currency and time zone carefully, because currency and time zone cannot be changed later. If you manage several clients, create a Manager account first and link individual ad accounts to it.
Add billing details and choose prepay or postpay where available. Invite colleagues under Settings, then Account access, and assign Standard or Advanced roles depending on who needs to edit.
Step 2: Install the UET tag
The Universal Event Tracking (UET) tag is Microsoft’s equivalent of a conversion pixel. Without it, there are no conversion goals, no remarketing lists and no automated bidding worth using.
- Open Tools, then UET tag, and create a new tag.
- Install it on every page, either by pasting the code into the site header or by using the Microsoft Advertising UET template in Google Tag Manager.
- Enable Consent Mode if you serve users in the EU or UK so the tag respects cookie choices.
- Create conversion goals under Tools, then Conversion goals: purchases, form submissions, calls or page visits.
- Pass revenue values for purchase goals so you can bid on return on ad spend later.
- Use the UET Tag Helper browser extension to confirm the tag fires.
Should you import from Google Ads?
If you already have working Google Ads campaigns, importing is the fastest start. Choose Import, then Import from Google Ads, sign in to Google and select the campaigns. Microsoft brings over campaigns, ad groups, keywords, ads, extensions and bids.
After import, review three things. Budgets are copied at Google levels, which may be too high for Microsoft’s smaller volume. Bid strategies may not map perfectly. Some extensions and audience lists may not transfer. You can schedule recurring imports so changes in Google sync automatically, but many teams turn this off after the first import so they can tune Microsoft separately.
Which campaign types are available?
Search campaigns
Text ads on Bing search results and partner sites. Responsive search ads work the same way as on Google: up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions. Keyword match types are broad, phrase and exact.
Shopping campaigns
Product ads fed from Microsoft Merchant Center. You can import your Google Merchant Center feed directly, which saves building a new one. Performance Max is also available and covers search, shopping and audience placements together.
Audience ads
Image and native ads on the Microsoft Audience Network, which includes MSN, Outlook and Edge. A useful feature here is LinkedIn profile targeting, which lets you target by company, industry and job function, a distinct advantage for B2B advertisers.
How should you structure the first campaigns?
Keep the structure tight at first. Microsoft search volume is smaller than Google’s, so splitting into many small ad groups leaves each one with very little data.
- Start with your proven, highest-converting keywords from Google or from past data.
- Group keywords into themes of 10 to 20 closely related terms per ad group.
- Write at least one responsive search ad per ad group with distinct headlines.
- Add sitelinks, callouts and structured snippets; they make ads larger and more clickable.
- Add negative keywords from your Google account, plus any that appear in Microsoft’s search terms report.
- Set location targeting to “People in your targeted locations” rather than “people interested in” unless you sell to travellers.
How should bidding work in the first month?
Start with Enhanced CPC or manual CPC while conversion data builds. Once a campaign records a steady flow of conversions, move to Maximise conversions or Target CPA, and later Target ROAS for e-commerce. Microsoft also lets you set bid adjustments by device, location, time and audience.
For example, a B2B software company might begin search with 30 to 50 dollars a day on exact and phrase match keywords, add a 20 to 30 percent bid increase for audiences matched to target industries through LinkedIn profile targeting, and lower bids on mobile if demo requests come mostly from desktop. These are starting points to test, not rules.
What should you review after launch?
- Search terms report after the first week, adding negatives for irrelevant queries.
- Recommendations tab, accepting only those that fit your goals.
- Auction insights to see which competitors appear with you.
- Conversion counts compared with your CRM or store.
- Partner network performance; if search partners deliver poor leads, you can exclude specific sites.
- Copilot and other placements, which Microsoft continues to expand, by reviewing performance by network.
Mistakes we see in new Microsoft accounts
The first is copying Google budgets without adjustment, which leaves campaigns limited by nothing and spending slowly, or worse, spending on broad match terms that Google had already filtered with negatives you forgot to import. The second is ignoring the syndicated search partner network, which can bring traffic of uneven quality. The third is leaving audience ads on default placements without checking where they run. Each of these is visible in the first two weeks of reports if someone looks.
It also helps to check time-of-day performance. Because Microsoft’s audience leans toward desktop and office hours, many B2B accounts see most conversions on weekdays. An ad schedule that lowers bids at night and on weekends can stretch the same budget further.
Where to start this week
If you run Google Ads, import your two best search campaigns, cut their budgets to a level that fits Microsoft’s volume, and install the UET tag through Tag Manager. If you are starting fresh, set up one search campaign around your highest-intent keywords.
Our Microsoft Advertising team handles these imports and the cleanup that follows. Either way, install the UET tag before the first click, not after. Then put a recurring 30-minute slot in the calendar each week to read the search terms report and add negatives. Microsoft’s broad match can drift into loosely related queries, and a weekly habit catches that before it eats a month’s budget. After four weeks you will have enough data to decide whether automated bidding is ready.
Keep reading: Microsoft Advertising (Bing Ads) · Advertising