Ecommerce Guide to Microsoft Ads

For many online retailers, Google dominates the conversation when it comes to paid search. Yet Microsoft Ads offers a valuable alternative that smart ecommerce businesses should not overlook. With access to the Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo search networks, Microsoft Ads reaches an audience that often differs in demographics and purchasing behaviour from typical Google users.

This guide covers everything you need to know about running Microsoft Ads for ecommerce, from setting up your first shopping campaigns to conducting a full Microsoft Ads audit of your existing account.

Why Consider Microsoft Ads for Ecommerce?

Microsoft Ads for ecommerce presents a genuine opportunity to reach shoppers who may never see your Google campaigns. The Microsoft Search Network reaches millions of unique searchers, many of whom skew towards higher household incomes and greater purchasing power.

Several factors make Microsoft Ads worth considering for online retailers:

  • Lower competition means cost per click rates are frequently more affordable than Google
  • Different audience demographics can help you reach customers outside your usual Google traffic
  • Easy campaign imports allow you to replicate successful Google campaigns quickly
  • Integration with LinkedIn data enables unique B2B targeting options not available elsewhere
  • Growing market share as privacy-focused users increasingly choose alternative search engines

The platform also supports the same core campaign types that ecommerce businesses rely on, including text ads, shopping campaigns, and audience remarketing. If you are already running successful paid search campaigns, expanding to Microsoft Ads can increase your reach without requiring entirely new creative assets or landing pages.

Microsoft Ads vs Google Ads: Key Differences

Understanding Microsoft Ads vs Google Ads is essential before launching your first campaigns. While the platforms share many similarities in structure and functionality, several important differences affect how you should approach each one.

Audience and Reach

Google commands the larger share of search traffic globally. Microsoft’s network is smaller but includes users who may not use Google as their primary search engine. Desktop users make up a larger proportion of Microsoft’s audience, which can influence conversion rates for certain product categories.

Cost and Competition

Because fewer advertisers compete on Microsoft Ads, average cost per click rates are typically lower. This can translate to better return on ad spend, particularly in competitive product categories where Google clicks have become expensive.

Campaign Management Features

Both platforms offer similar campaign types and bidding strategies. Microsoft Ads allows direct imports from Google Ads, making it straightforward to transfer your existing campaign structures, keywords, and ad copy. However, some advanced Google features may not have direct equivalents in Microsoft Ads, so campaigns may need adjustment after import. You should also review your budgets and bidding strategies when importing to reflect how you wish these to be set within Microsoft, and disable future updates to these if you want to set different budgets for each platforms.

Audience Targeting

Microsoft Ads offers unique targeting options through LinkedIn profile data, allowing advertisers to target by company, industry, or job function. For B2B ecommerce or businesses selling to specific professional audiences, this represents a significant advantage over Google’s targeting capabilities.

In summary, Microsoft Ads offers a smaller but valuable search network with generally lower costs per click and access to an older, higher income audience. The platform also provides LinkedIn targeting options that Google cannot match. Both platforms support shopping ads through their respective Merchant Centers, and Microsoft makes it easy to import existing Google campaigns as a starting point.

Setting Up Microsoft Shopping Ads

Microsoft Shopping Ads display your products with images, prices, and merchant information directly in search results. For ecommerce businesses, these visual ads often drive higher click through rates than standard text ads because shoppers can see exactly what they are considering before clicking.

Creating Your Microsoft Merchant Center

Before running Microsoft Shopping Ads, you need to set up a Microsoft Merchant Center account and submit your product feed. The process involves several steps:

Step 1: Create your Merchant Center account Sign up for a store in the Microsoft Merchant Center portal directly within your Microsoft Ads account and verify your website ownership. You can verify through UET tag, meta tag, or CNAME record methods.

Step 2: Prepare your product feed Your product feed must include all required attributes such as product ID, title, description, link, image link, price, and availability. Microsoft accepts feeds in various formats including XML, TXT, and TSV files. You can also import your product feed from Google Ads.

Step 3: Submit and validate your feed Upload your feed directly or provide a URL where Microsoft can fetch it automatically. The system will validate your feed and flag any errors that need correction before your products can appear in ads.

Optimising Your Product Feed

The quality of your product feed directly affects the performance of your Microsoft Shopping Ads. Several optimisation practices can improve your results:

  • Write descriptive titles that include relevant keywords shoppers might search for
  • Use high quality images that clearly show your products against clean backgrounds
  • Keep pricing accurate and ensure your feed updates frequently to reflect any changes
  • Include product attributes like colour, size, and material where applicable
  • Categorise products correctly using Microsoft’s taxonomy to improve matching

If you are already running Google Shopping campaigns with an optimised feed, you can often use the same feed for Microsoft with minimal adjustments. The required attributes are largely similar between platforms.

Microsoft Product Ads: Campaign Structure

Microsoft Product Ads operate through shopping campaigns that you create within your Microsoft Ads account. Structuring these campaigns effectively helps you control budgets, manage bids, and optimise performance across different product categories.

Campaign Organisation Options

You can organise your Microsoft Product Ads in several ways:

By product category Create separate campaigns or ad groups for different product types. This allows you to set different bids based on margin or performance, and makes reporting clearer.

By brand If you sell multiple brands with different profit margins or competitive landscapes, separating them can help with bid management.

By performance tier Group your best selling products separately from slower movers. This lets you invest more heavily in proven performers while testing others with lower bids.

By price point Products at different price points may convert differently and warrant different bidding approaches. Higher priced items might justify higher cost per click if conversion values are proportionally greater.

Bidding Strategies for Shopping Campaigns

Microsoft Ads offers several bidding options for shopping campaigns:

  • Manual CPC gives you direct control over maximum bids at the product group level
  • Enhanced CPC allows Microsoft to adjust your manual bids based on conversion likelihood
  • Maximise clicks automatically sets bids to generate the most clicks within your budget
  • Target ROAS optimises bids to achieve a specific return on ad spend target
  • Maximise conversions focuses on driving the most conversions possible
  • Cost per sale sets bids to achieve a target cost per conversion

For new campaigns, starting with manual or enhanced CPC while gathering conversion data is often sensible. Once you have sufficient conversion history, automated strategies like target ROAS can help scale performance efficiently.

Managing Your Microsoft Ads Campaigns

Effective Microsoft Ads management requires ongoing attention to campaign performance, bid adjustments, and feed maintenance. The platform offers various tools and reports to help you monitor and improve results over time.

Key Performance Metrics

When evaluating your Microsoft Ads for ecommerce campaigns, focus on metrics that directly relate to your business goals:

Click through rate (CTR) indicates how compelling your ads are to searchers. Low CTR may suggest your product titles, images, or prices need improvement to attract more clicks, or you need to add negative keywords to prevent ads from triggering for irrelevant terms.

Conversion rate shows what percentage of clicks result in purchases. Poor conversion rates might indicate landing page issues, pricing mismatches between ads and your website or a poor checkout experience.

Cost per acquisition (CPA) tells you how much you spend to generate each sale. This helps you understand whether campaigns are profitable.

Return on ad spend (ROAS) measures revenue generated relative to advertising costs. This is often the primary metric for ecommerce advertisers evaluating campaign success.

Impression share reveals what percentage of eligible impressions your ads received. Low impression share might indicate budget limitations or bid competitiveness issues.

Regular Optimisation Tasks

Successful Microsoft Ads management involves regular review and adjustment:

  • Review search term reports weekly to identify new keyword opportunities and negative keyword additions
  • Adjust bids and targets based on performance and targeting data
  • Update product feeds to reflect inventory changes, price updates, and new products
  • Test ad variations to improve click through and conversion rates
  • Monitor competitor activity and adjust strategy accordingly
  • Check for disapproved products and resolve any feed errors promptly

Working with a specialist paid media team can help ensure your campaigns receive consistent attention and benefit from expertise across multiple platforms and accounts.

Conducting a Microsoft Ads Audit

Whether you are taking over an existing account or reviewing your own campaigns after a period of running, a thorough Microsoft Ads audit helps identify opportunities for improvement and areas of wasted spend.

Account Structure Review

Start by examining how the account is organised:

  • Are campaigns logically structured by product category, brand, or objective?
  • Do ad groups contain tightly themed keyword groups?
  • Are shopping campaigns using appropriate product group subdivisions?
  • Is the account easy to navigate and manage efficiently?

Poor structure often leads to wasted budget and missed optimisation opportunities. Restructuring may be necessary if campaigns have grown organically without clear planning.

Performance Analysis

Dig into the data to understand what is working and what is not:

Campaign level review Identify which campaigns drive the best return on ad spend and which underperform. Look for campaigns consuming budget without generating profitable conversions.

Keyword and search term analysis Review which keywords trigger your ads and whether they align with purchase intent. Check for irrelevant search terms that should be added as negatives.

Product performance For shopping campaigns, analyse which products generate sales and which receive clicks without converting. Consider excluding poor performers or adjusting bids accordingly. Also consider optimisations and improvements to improve the quality of the product feed.

Audience performance If using audience targeting or remarketing, evaluate which audiences perform best and whether bid adjustments are appropriate.

Technical and Tracking Verification

Ensure the account foundation is solid:

  • Is conversion tracking implemented correctly and recording all relevant actions?
  • Are Universal Event Tracking (UET) tags firing properly across your website?
  • Has consent mode been correctly configured to ensure trackings tags adopt to cookie choices?
  • Is your product feed submitting without errors?
  • Are campaigns using appropriate location and language targeting?

A comprehensive audit and insights review can uncover issues that may not be obvious from surface level metrics, providing a roadmap for meaningful improvements.

Common Issues Found in Audits

Q: What are typical problems discovered during a Microsoft Ads audit?

A: Common issues include overly broad match types leading to irrelevant traffic, missing negative keywords, outdated ad copy referencing old promotions, poor campaign structure making management difficult, inadequate bid adjustments for device or location, and conversion tracking gaps that distort performance data.

Q: How often should I audit my Microsoft Ads account?

A: A thorough audit every quarter is sensible for active accounts. However, routine performance monitoring should happen weekly or at minimum monthly to catch issues before they significantly impact results.

Q: Can I audit Microsoft Ads myself or do I need external help?

A: You can certainly review your own account using the framework above. However, an external perspective often identifies blind spots and brings experience from other accounts that can inform recommendations. Fresh eyes frequently spot opportunities that become invisible when you work in an account daily.

Integrating Microsoft Ads With Your Wider Strategy

Microsoft Ads should not operate in isolation. For best results, your campaigns should complement your Google Ads activity and align with your broader ecommerce marketing objectives.

Coordinating With Google Campaigns

If you run both platforms, consider how they work together:

  • Consistent messaging across platforms helps reinforce your brand and offers
  • Shared learnings from one platform can inform optimisations on the other
  • Budget allocation should reflect performance differences and opportunity on each platform
  • Attribution considerations may mean the same customer sees ads on both networks before converting

Some advertisers find Microsoft Ads works particularly well for brand defence campaigns, where lower competition makes protecting your brand terms more affordable. Others use it to expand reach for their best performing Google campaigns.

Remarketing Across Platforms

Microsoft Ads supports remarketing to people who have previously visited your website. This can be particularly effective for ecommerce, where shoppers often browse before purchasing. You can create audiences based on:

  • All website visitors
  • Visitors to specific product pages
  • Cart abandoners who did not complete checkout
  • Past purchasers for cross sell or repeat purchase campaigns

Remarketing across both Google and Microsoft networks increases the chances of re-engaging interested shoppers wherever they search.

Getting Started With Microsoft Ads

If you have not yet tried Microsoft Ads for your ecommerce business, here is a practical approach to getting started:

Week 1: Account setup Create your Microsoft Ads account and Microsoft Merchant Center. Verify your website and begin preparing your product feed.

Week 2: Feed submission and campaign import Submit your product feed and allow time for validation. If you have existing Google campaigns, use the import tool to bring them into Microsoft Ads as a starting point.

Week 3: Review and adjust Check imported campaigns for any settings that need adjustment. Ensure tracking is implemented correctly and test that conversions record properly.

Week 4: Launch and monitor Activate campaigns with conservative budgets initially. Monitor performance closely and make early adjustments based on initial data.

Ongoing: Optimise and expand As you gather performance data, refine bids, expand successful campaigns, and pause underperformers. Gradually increase investment in what works.

Working With Your Microsoft Ads Campaigns

Microsoft Ads represents a genuine opportunity for ecommerce businesses willing to look beyond Google. Lower competition, different audience demographics, and straightforward campaign management make it an attractive addition to many retailers’ paid search strategies.

The key principles of successful ecommerce PPC apply equally here: maintain a high quality product feed, structure campaigns logically, monitor performance regularly, and continuously optimise based on data. Whether you manage campaigns in house or work with specialists, the platform rewards the same disciplined approach that drives results on any paid search channel.

If you are already running successful shopping ads campaigns, testing Microsoft Ads lets you reach new audiences without developing entirely new creative or strategy. For many retailers, it becomes a valuable complement to their existing paid search activity.

Getting Expert Support

Microsoft Ads and ecommerce PPC continue to offer strong opportunities for online retailers seeking to reach customers who are ready to buy. The principles covered in this guide provide a foundation for success, whether you implement them yourself or work with specialists.

If you are looking for support with your Microsoft Ads campaigns, whether that involves a full Microsoft Ads audit, help with product feed optimisation, or ongoing campaign management, our paid media team has extensive experience helping online retailers grow their sales through paid search and shopping ads.

Get in touch with our team to discuss how we can help improve your ecommerce advertising results.