11 Best Microsoft Ads Strategies To Win Big On Bing in 2025

With a 12.23% market share, Microsoft Advertising holds a powerful platform that more marketers are starting to take seriously—and for good reason.

It gives you access to over a billion people while offering 20–35% lower cost-per-click (CPC) than Google Ads (costs can vary by industry). Plus, its audience tends to be older and more financially stable, which often leads to higher conversion rates and larger order values.

What makes it even more interesting is the Microsoft ecosystem. With built-in access to Microsoft Edge, Microsoft 365, and integrations with Microsoft Start, your ads aren’t just limited to search—they can show up across a wide range of search engines and surfaces, including Outlook, Skype, and even the news.

In short, Microsoft Ads has quietly become one of the most underrated digital marketing channels out there. And thanks to the Microsoft advertising network, you now have more control, smarter targeting, and easier ways to build brand awareness, especially for small and mid-sized eCommerce stores.

Many marketers simply try to replicate their successful Google Ads campaigns on Microsoft Ads to drive more sales and conversions for their eCommerce store.

Despite their similarities, copying your Google strategy won’t deliver optimal results because the platforms’ audiences, features, and conversion strategies differ.

So, I am going to share a few tips to enhance your Microsoft Ads performance and drive stronger results, whether you’re just getting started or already running campaigns.

1. Increase Product Visibility With Microsoft Merchant Center

Once you have linked the accounts to your eCommerce store, all of your products will automatically be pushed to your merchant center account.

Now, whenever you add new products to your eCommerce store, you can observe the same changes here. 

Here are a few things to keep in mind while optimizing your merchant store:

• Before you run your ads, check Microsoft’s list of supported countries to ensure that your ads reach the right people.
• Verify your domain with the Bing Master tool or UET tag
• At least have one SKU for your products.
• Add product titles with proper URLs beginning with an HTTP or HTTPS (not IP addresses) and ensure you’re using the correct matching type for your product feed.
• Review your feed report to check for product-related keywords that Microsoft might consider explicit or inappropriate.
• Make sure to add your product ID, Title, link, price, description, image link and shipping (for Germany only) properly.
• Verify the character limit and image size specifications before transferring your Google feed to the Microsoft merchant center.
• Configure the robots.txt to allow Adixbot to crawl your site.

Since competition is less, chances to increase your product visibility increase. But this is only possible if you have optimized your merchant center exactly the way you would optimize any other advertising network.

2. Choose Standard Shopping To Win On Bing

Similar to Google Ads, you have the option to create Smart Shopping and Performance Max campaign types on Bing. 

Because Microsoft’s Performance Max is still developing, it might not offer the same control and data transparency as Standard Shopping campaigns. 

Thus, Advertisers who want more control over bidding, placements, and negative keywords may find Standard Shopping a better fit.

Here’s a comparison to understand why:

Feature	Standard Shopping	Performance Max
Level of Manual Control	High	Limited
Ad Placement	Primarily Shopping	Multiple Platforms
Flexibility	High	Medium
Targeting	Manual Granular Targeting	AI-Based General Targeting
Data Insights	Detailed	Automated Surface-level

As a result, advertisers may waste their budget on low-quality placements without achieving strong returns.

With Performance Max’s limited control and transparency, advertisers may waste their budget on low-quality placements without achieving strong returns.

For eCommerce businesses aiming to maximize their ROI through Bing PPC, Standard Shopping campaigns offer greater control. This approach allows for precise targeting, unlike Performance Max campaigns, which are still developing on the Microsoft Advertising Network.

When setting up your Standard Shopping campaign, select the ‘Search only’ option shown in the image below if your goal is to drive high-quality traffic. This is important because audience ads tend to attract a broader, less targeted audience, resulting in lower conversion rates and reduced ROI.

3. Import Google Campaigns Success to Microsoft 

Save time by importing your successfully running campaigns from Google to Microsoft. 

Yes, you heard that right, you can easily import campaigns from Google into Microsoft using Microsoft’s built-in import tool. This tool is designed to replicate your Google Ads success by transferring filtering options, keywords, ad patterns, and targeting settings. 

If any Google settings cannot be replicated on Microsoft (such as Google’s more granular targeting options), the import tool will notify you. To avoid issues, you can adjust certain elements before finalizing the transfer.

• For example, if you are using a tracking template in Google that references “Google CPC,” replace it with “Microsoft CPC” to ensure your analytics are not skewed.
• Similarly, any targeting options that don’t translate directly can be modified within the import tool to ensure a smooth transition.

I recommend doing just one import initially instead of scheduling recurring imports right away because an import can trigger a lot of unnecessary changes that you may not need.

Once the import is complete, make sure to:

• Verify that the correct Universal Event Tracking (UET) tag is linked to the campaign.
• Update bid strategies as needed to align with Microsoft Ads’ settings.
• Check that only relevant data from Google Ads is transferred, leaving behind anything unnecessary.

Once everything is reviewed and optimized, you can then schedule your imports to keep your Microsoft Ads in sync with Google Ads while maintaining control over the quality and relevance of your campaigns.

If you are looking to streamline your Microsoft advertising efforts, then importing existing campaigns can be a valuable starting point.

4. Fix Your Keyword Targeting

Mastering keyword targeting is essential for any effective digital advertising services strategy, and Microsoft Ads is no exception.

The keyword targeting structure of Bing Ads is similar to Google Ads, but differences in match types, negative keyword handling, and search network reach can impact ad performance.

Effective keyword targeting is a core component of any strong digital advertising services package, and Microsoft Ads is no different.

Key Differences in Keyword Targeting

1. Match Type Variations 

Microsoft Ads supports Exact Match, Phrase Match, and Broad Match, just like Google Ads. But Microsoft’s Broad Match is less aggressive, meaning it doesn’t expand as widely into loosely related queries.

Tip: To improve targeting, I recommend using Exact Match and Phrase Match to help Bing’s algorithm balance broad reach while staying focused on the right audience.

2. Negative Keywords 

Unlike Google Ads, Microsoft Ads handles Broad Match negative keywords differently. On Microsoft, Broad Match negatives will only block searches that include all the words in your negative keyword, not variations or related terms. 

Follow these steps to align your keyword strategy with Microsoft’s ad algorithm for better targeting and ad performance:

• Use Microsoft’s Advertising Keyword Planner to research and refine your keyword list.
• Add negative keywords as Exact or Broad Match negatives to prevent unwanted impressions.
• Keep track of the Product Negative Keyword Conflict Report to make sure your broad-match negative keywords are not accidentally blocking relevant searches, especially if your product list changes often.

3. Search Network & Audience 

• Microsoft Ads extends beyond Bing to include Yahoo, AOL, and other search partners, which may affect keyword performance.
• As audience behavior differs, keyword targeting often results in different conversion rates compared to Google Ads.

For more clarity, let me explain this with an example of advertising running shoes with different match types:

Match Type	Google Ads Example	Microsoft Ads Example
Broad Match	Triggers for “best sneakers for jogging”	Less likely to trigger such variations
Phrase Match	Matches “buy running shoes online”	Matches similarly, but with fewer broad variations
Exact Match	Matches “running shoes” or “running shoe”	Matches “running shoes” but avoids synonyms like “sneakers”

Separate Campaigns for Better Control

• Create separate campaigns to control budget allocation and create ads that match your audience’s needs more effectively.
• Make sure each ad copy aligns closely with its assigned keyword so that when users search for a term, they see an ad that is highly relevant to their query.

Branded Keyword Strategy

• Microsoft Ads has a lower cost for branded search ads due to less competition.
• Use your company name to advertise your product because if your competitors see you doing well on Bing, they might start bidding on your brand name to steal your traffic.

Thus, running your own branded ads will protect your brand and make sure your customers find you, not your competitors.

5. Craft High-Performing Ads With Microsoft Ad Studio

We get it. Sometimes, it’s just a pain to get new images to use for ads. Most of the ad platforms have some sort of asset library. But recently, Microsoft Advertising added some new AI assistance features to their Ad Studio to help advertisers either edit current creatives or potentially create new ones to test.

Let’s understand all the features

Features Of Microsoft Ad Studio

• Asset Library – One of the basic features is that you can add any image or video or access any previously uploaded images & videos.
• Add Images from Any URL – Microsoft can pull images directly from a website that you enter, which you can select and add to the library for current or future use for campaign or ad creation. 

Use Stock Images – Microsoft offers stock images through its partnership with Shutterstock.

Just remember to check ad policies before selecting images. Even though an image is available through Shutterstock, if it violates Microsoft’s policies, your ad can still be disapproved.  

Microsoft isn’t going to vet them for you. Thus, it’s up to the advertiser to be familiar with these policies.

Tip For eCommerce Advertisers

✅ Use a clear naming convention to make the organization of assets a lot easier for uploading a ton of images or videos.

Use AI for Image Enhancement and Creation

This smart tool features background change, which can pull your product from an image and add a new background by letting you add cues to its AI to add a new background to your image. 

So, if you have no design capabilities in-house and you lack the talent yourself and are running out of time, you can generate AI-based images with the prompt you give it. 

I still think real images work better, but if you have nothing to work with, it’s not a bad tool to use. 

After creating it, you can start using it and create different variations of ads with different images to see what performs better, as creative testing is always going to be important for visual-based campaigns.  

6. Take Charge of Bing’s Audience  Network

Microsoft allows you to take some actions on their partner network to improve their performance and control where your ads are showing up. 

Luckily, unlike Google, Microsoft is a lot more transparent about which websites are there in their audience network, and they will actually show up in a default report for you.

So what we can do about this is, 

Step 1: Check the box next to the campaign you want to edit.

Step 2: Click Edit > Other changes.

Step 3: In Campaign settings or Select a setting, choose Website exclusions and enter the URLs you want to exclude.

Here, you can manually enter URLs where you don’t want your ads to appear, reducing wasted spend on low-quality audience ads.

From the outset, before collecting any data, exclude these four key URLs:

• msn.com
• bing.com
• outlook.live.com
• play.google.com

These exclusions will greatly improve campaign efficiency by preventing wasted ad spend on low-quality placements.

To identify these sites, go to the Reporting section and search for the URL. Click to generate a report of where your ads are being displayed.

Set the date range to All-time, then check the Network section to find websites consuming ad spend with little return.

Now, if you are in an individual account where you logged in, and it’s not part of a Client Account, you can easily create an exclusion list right from this page.

However, if you are an advertiser and operating your client’s account, you will need access to the manager account to create a list of irrelevant websites. It’s best to create a separate list for each client rather than using one for your entire Client Center.

Review this report once or twice a week, collect underperforming URLs, and add them to the website exclusions either to individual campaigns or to the account as a whole. 

This will prevent wasted ad spending on placements that are not performing well for you or your clients.

7. Expand Your Reach With Strategic Targeting

Getting your location targeting right is super important for running successful Microsoft Shopping Ads. 

For example, if you are submitting your product feed to a merchant center targeting the United States, then you won’t be able to run shopping ads in the U.K. 

To advertise in multiple countries, you will need separate feeds. However, I recommend keeping things simple to avoid unnecessary complications.

Due to Bing’s lower adoption outside the US, combining multiple English-speaking markets like Australia, Canada, and the UK can help you reach a meaningful audience size that might be too small when targeting these countries individually.

Source: Bing Users by Country

Here’s why grouping countries on Bing works:

• Less competition in non-U.S. markets as fewer advertisers are using Bing outside the U.S., so it’s easier to rank higher.
• Maximizes your potential sales volume, which might be limited to individual country campaigns.

8. Implement Vertical Scaling To Boost Your Bing Ads

Microsoft Ads don’t require a large budget to get started. 

Let’s say you are spending $500 or more daily on Google Ads, then you can start with just $50 a day on Microsoft Ads, which is about 10% of your Google budget.

Even though conversions are the goal, I recommend using the Maximize Clicks bid strategy to make sure that Microsoft Ads does not charge more than the allocated amount for a click. 

Because the quality of traffic from these Ads is usually high, as people here tend to have strong purchasing power, this approach drives effective results at a lower cost.

However, try to keep Microsoft’s advertising structure as simple as possible because the moment you introduce too many elements, it starts to overlap, reduce momentum, and make you compete against yourself, hurting your results.

Thus, effective budget control is essential for scaling your Bing PPC campaigns and maximizing your return on investment

To avoid this, stick to one simple scaling method, which is vertical scaling. This means increasing your budget on successful campaigns instead of creating too many new ones. 

Once your ads start performing well, raise your budget by 20–30% every 3 to 5 days. This helps you grow without disrupting Bing’s system.

As most of the brands ignore Bing Ads, this strategy can help you get great results with less competition!

Effective budget control is essential for scaling your Bing PPC campaigns and maximizing your return on investment

9. Take Advantage of LinkedIn Data for B2B Targeting

Microsoft’s advertising platform uniquely allows you to target potential customers based on LinkedIn profile information – a competitive advantage that no other major ad platform offers. 

Let’s understand this with an example. 

Let’s say you’re a chef launching a new high-protein kids snack, and you want to target employees of The Craft Company, which is a UK-based supplier of cake decorating and sugarcraft.

And if someone from Craft searches for “high-protein kids’ snacks,” they might be looking to purchase such products or collaborate with a company that makes them.

To increase my chances of securing a large order, I would increase my bid by 200%. 

This means that if I typically pay $5 per click, I would increase it to $10 for that click from Craft employees, as a potential deal with them could be game-changing and possibly lead to buying a huge stock load. 

But let’s say I don’t know what company I want to work with, and I just want to go for industry-based targeting.  

For that, Microsoft Ads provides an industry category selection option where you can select the relevant categories, including age, gender,  industry, and job function. 

Along with the selection, you can also adjust bids for each category to ensure your ads appear when someone in that industry searches for your targeted keywords.

However, keep in mind that 

• LinkedIn-based targeting in Microsoft Ads only adjusts bids, not who sees your ads.
• These bid adjustments don’t affect your main campaign bids but just allow you to fine-tune targeting.
• You can increase or decrease bids to target or exclude certain audiences.

Microsoft Advertising lets you target LinkedIn job functions, industries, and more. This is particularly powerful for B2B brands.

10. Optimize Your Impression With Impression-Based Remarketing List

Impression-based remarketing is a great way to stay in front of people who have seen your ads but didn’t click. 

Unlike traditional remarketing, which usually targets people who visited your website, this method focuses on users who were exposed to your ads but didn’t engage at that moment.

Who Should You Target with Impression-Based Remarketing?

Impression-based remarketing means showing ads to people who saw your ad but didn’t click on it.

Here’s whom you should focus on:

• Top-of-Funnel Audiences: Targeting people who aren’t familiar with your brand yet.
• In-market audiences: Targeting people who are actively looking for similar products.
• Remarketing audience – Targeting to capture people who saw your ad but didn’t immediately click.
  
  This increases brand awareness and brings in potential customers who just need a little more exposure to your business.

Suggestion

✅ If you have an uploaded customer list, create a separate campaign targeting that list rather than using it for impression-based remarketing.

But how are they valuable?

People are busy, and you never know what else they have going on at the moment, but they could still be a valuable audience.

If you’re running higher-level campaigns like audience ads, video ads, or Performance Max campaigns with LinkedIn targeting, 

We recommend immediately setting up impression-based remarketing lists. This gives you a second chance to engage users who saw but never clicked your initial ads—which is the true value of impression-based remarketing.

Let me show you how to set it up!

Here, we are still targeting a relevant audience, but it’s a different type of user. So, what I would recommend is – 

• Exclude website visitors or customer lists from these ad groups to differentiate people who are already familiar with your brand.
• Adjust your messaging 

– For existing visitors/customers → Use direct, conversion-focused messaging.

– For impression-based audiences → Use softer, awareness-driven messaging since they may not know your brand yet.

It’s an interesting feature from Microsoft and definitely something I would recommend you test for running more top-of-funnel high funnel audiences to build awareness. 

With search engines like Bing and DuckDuckGo, plus Microsoft properties like Outlook and Edge, Microsoft’s ecosystem is ideal for retargeting across channels.

This strategy allows you to re-engage users who previously interacted with your Bing Ads, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

11. Keep Your Ads Updated With Ad Customizers 

Ad customizers are an option for advertisers to change data in a headline or to create headlines and descriptions that no one else can replicate. 

For those who are new to Microsoft Ads, this extension is available in Business data under bulk and other options. 

How Ad Customizers Work?

I would like to explain this with an example by taking Percent as an attribute and adding in a number here. 

I’m being really proactive here, so when Black Friday arrives, I already know that all my shoes are gonna be 40% off.

To see how it looks in an ad, 

Step 1: Open the ad page and go down to the ad section.

Step 2: Write your description here. It is ‘All shoes are”.

Step 3: Add a space opening curly brace, add a customizer, and select the attribute.

As this attribute has the text, after completing the headline, you can see the ad display layout to check out the ad customizer in action.

Why Use Ad Customizers?

✅ Eliminates manual updates – No need to rewrite ads every time a sale changes.

✅ Keeps ads evergreen – Your headlines stay relevant while specific details update automatically.

✅ Works for both small and large stores:

For a small number of products or occasional promotions, manually creating a customizer is easy.      

For a massive store with tons of products along with tons of product categories, uploading a bulk file with various ad customizer attributes allows for a more scalable and automated approach.

For this, you can download the sample template and see how to structure your data for customization. 

This setup enables you to use ad customizers across your entire account in any Responsive Search Ad or Multimedia Ad. 

However, within the Microsoft Ads interface, you can only create customizers for specific campaigns.

But with ad customizers, you can tell Microsoft Ads to:

• Apply customizations at the campaign or ad group level.
• Get extremely precise by triggering ad customizers only when specific keywords are searched within an ad group.

Plus, it gives you more flexibility to test different messages that wouldn’t be possible with static ads. Ultimately, ad customizers make ad management more efficient and your campaigns more competitive. 

For those looking for a comprehensive digital marketing solution, Ad customizers can be a strong addition to the campaign.

Final Thoughts 

Microsoft Advertising offers a powerful opportunity for businesses looking to expand beyond Google and tap into Bing’s unique audience. 

Microsoft’s reach goes far beyond Bing. From Connected TV placements to in-game advertising inside Microsoft Casual Games, you can get creative with where and how your ads show up.

With AI-driven automation, advanced audience targeting, and new ad formats like CTV and retail media, it provides brands with cost-effective ways to reach high-intent audiences.

By implementing these Bing Ads strategies, you will save time, keep your ads fresh, and ensure your promotions remain competitive.

Thus, it’s all about staying ahead, and these trends are just the tip of the iceberg.

If you are seeking expert assistance with your Bing Ads management, consider partnering with a reputable Microsoft Ads agency. We can help. 

Let’s chat and make a plan together so you can grab those new opportunities and drive more sales. 

Mastering Microsoft Advertising can significantly enhance your overall digital advertising solutions, driving growth and maximizing your return on investment.

Source: Market share of leading desktop search engines