The short answer
- Microsoft Ads (formerly Bing Ads) shows search ads on Bing, AOL, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia and other search partners, plus audience ads on MSN, Microsoft Start, Microsoft Edge and Outlook.com.
- Eligible ads also serve inside Copilot automatically. You cannot opt out, and Microsoft does not report Copilot metrics separately.
- There is no account minimum. In USD the minimum keyword bid is $0.05, the minimum daily budget is $0.05 and the minimum monthly budget is $5.
- You can import Google Ads campaigns directly and schedule the import to repeat daily, weekly or monthly.
- It is usually worth it once your Google Search campaigns are profitable, and especially for B2B, because Microsoft lets you adjust bids by LinkedIn company, industry and job function.
Microsoft Advertising is the ad platform behind Bing search results, the Microsoft Advertising Network and ads inside Copilot. Most people still call it Bing Ads. Below: where the ads run, who sees them, which campaign types exist, what it costs, how the Google import works and when it is worth the setup time.
Where Microsoft Ads show up
Microsoft splits its inventory into two halves, search advertising and audience advertising. Your campaign type decides which half you buy.
Search advertising
Search ads run against keywords. Microsoft's help center lists the sites as Microsoft Bing, AOL, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia and other partners. The ad distribution setting controls the reach: the entire Microsoft Advertising Network, or Microsoft sites and select traffic only.
Campaign and ad types that can serve in search placements: Responsive Search ads, Dynamic Search ads, Multimedia ads, Performance Max, Shopping, App Install ads and Vertical ads.
Audience advertising
Audience ads are display, native and video placements on MSN, Microsoft Start, Microsoft Edge, Outlook.com and publisher partners. Audience campaigns, Performance Max and Shopping Audience campaigns serve here. Ad placement settings let you pick specific placements.
Ads in Copilot
Copilot answers questions conversationally, and Microsoft serves ads inside those answers. According to Microsoft's help center:
- Ads in Copilot are built automatically from your existing text and image assets.
- Every eligible campaign and ad type is opted in. Advertisers cannot opt out, and serving is not guaranteed.
- Eligible types: Multimedia ads, Product ads (Shopping and Performance Max), Search ads that carry a logo extension or business logo automated extension, and Property promotion and Tours and Activities ads.
- Negative keywords apply in Copilot the same way they do on search.
- Microsoft does not currently report Copilot-specific metrics.
The practical takeaway: a Search ad without a logo is not eligible for Copilot. Microsoft names Performance Max as the best way to increase Copilot exposure, because it supplies the most assets.
Who you reach on Microsoft Ads
Microsoft's own search ads page cites Comscore data for US desktop traffic from March 2023: 6.4 billion monthly PC searches, 109 million unique PC users and a 38.1% PC search market share across its network. Those figures are desktop only and three years old, so treat them as directional. Microsoft has not published a newer breakdown on that page.
The more useful audience fact is targeting. Microsoft Advertising is the only ad platform besides LinkedIn that lets you target by LinkedIn profile data:
- Company (up to 1,000 companies per ad group or campaign)
- Industry
- Job function
LinkedIn profile targeting works on Search, Dynamic Search, Shopping, Audience and Performance Max campaigns. It is bid-only: it raises or lowers bids for matching people and does not exclude everyone else. It can only be used on campaigns targeting the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France and Germany.
For a B2B advertiser that combination is rare: keyword intent from search, with a bid boost when the searcher works at a target account. If you also run LinkedIn's own ads, see how Sprites runs LinkedIn Ads.
Microsoft Ads campaign types
| Campaign type | What it does | Where it serves |
|---|---|---|
| Search | Keyword-targeted text ads (Responsive and Dynamic Search ads, Multimedia ads) | Bing, search partners, Copilot |
| Performance Max | One campaign, many formats, automated bidding toward conversions | Search and audience placements, Copilot |
| Shopping | Product ads from a Microsoft Merchant Center feed | Search results, audience placements, Copilot |
| Audience | Display, native and online video ads | MSN, Microsoft Start, Edge, Outlook.com, partners |
| App | App install ads | Search placements |
| Hotel / vertical | Feed-based travel and property ads | Search placements, Copilot (Property promotion, Tours and Activities) |
Bid strategies
Microsoft's automated strategies are Maximize conversions, Maximize conversion value, Enhanced CPC, Maximize clicks, Target impression share and Cost per completed view. Manual options are Cost per sale (Shopping), Manual CPI (App) and Manual CPM (Audience).
One 2025 change matters if you copy old playbooks: since August 4, 2025, new campaigns cannot use stand-alone Target CPA or Target ROAS. You set a target CPA inside Maximize conversions and a target ROAS inside Maximize conversion value. Conversion-based strategies need a UET tag plus an active conversion goal, or offline conversions. Microsoft recommends letting a strategy accumulate at least 30 conversions before judging it.
Importing from Google Ads
Most advertisers start on Microsoft by importing their Google Ads account. The import is built into Microsoft Advertising, and Microsoft's import tools also accept Meta Ads and Pinterest Ads as sources.
- Sign in to Microsoft Advertising and open the import from Google Ads.
- Sign in with the Google account that has access to the Google Ads account.
- Pick the Google Ads account and the campaigns to bring over.
- Choose import options. You can, for example, raise all budgets by a percentage or tell the import not to touch budgets already set in Microsoft.
- Choose a schedule: now, once, daily, weekly, monthly or auto.
- Review the results and error log. Microsoft says plainly that not everything imports, so check every campaign before it goes live.
The scheduled import trap
A recurring import keeps pushing Google settings into Microsoft. Microsoft's help center notes that automated imports reactivate campaigns and reset settings, including budget, back to what they are in Google Ads. If you lower a bid or pause a campaign in Microsoft and leave a weekly import running, the next import can undo it. Pick one source of truth: either keep editing in Google and let the import sync, or stop the schedule and manage Microsoft on its own.
After the import, three fixes are almost always needed: add a logo extension so Search ads are Copilot eligible, rebuild negative keyword lists for Bing's search terms (see fixing Microsoft Ads negative keyword lists), and install the UET tag so conversion bidding has data.
What Microsoft Ads costs
Microsoft Ads has no setup fee and no account minimum. You pay per click on Search and Shopping, per impression on Manual CPM audience campaigns, and per sale on Cost per sale Shopping campaigns.
| USD limit | Amount |
|---|---|
| Minimum keyword bid | $0.05 |
| Maximum keyword bid | $1,000 |
| Minimum daily budget | $0.05 |
| Minimum monthly budget | $5 |
| Shopping fixed bid minimum (US) | $0.01, with $0.05 recommended |
Budgets are set per campaign: Daily, Shared (across campaigns) or Lifetime (Audience campaigns only). Microsoft treats the daily budget as a target and calculates the real limit monthly, so single days can run above or below it.
Microsoft does not publish average CPCs, and they vary by category, so price your own keywords. A workable test: take your five best Google Search campaigns, import them with budgets at 15 to 20% of their Google spend, run four weeks, then compare CPC and cost per conversion side by side. The CPC calculator does the arithmetic.
When Microsoft Ads is worth it
It tends to pay off when:
- Your Google Search campaigns already convert profitably. The import reuses keywords, ads and structure you have already proven.
- You sell to businesses. LinkedIn company, industry and job function bid adjustments are not available on Google.
- Your buyers research on desktop. Microsoft's headline share figure, 38.1% of US PC searches, is a desktop number.
- Google is capped. If campaigns already hold high impression share on their best terms, more spend on Google buys less. Microsoft is incremental reach on the same intent.
- You run Shopping. The import can bring Merchant Center data, and Product ads are eligible for Copilot.
It is usually not worth it yet when you have no conversion tracking, when Google Search itself is not profitable, or when total search volume in your niche is so small that Bing's share would produce a handful of clicks a month. Fix Google first. The Bing Ads vs Google Ads comparison covers which to start with.
Before you launch, look at what competitors already run on Bing in the Microsoft ads library.
Running Microsoft Ads with Sprites
Sprites' Microsoft Advertising agent is included on the Grow plan ($985 a month), which carries all six ads agents: Google, Meta, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Reddit and TikTok, plus AEO. You connect the account and the agent reads the data itself. For Microsoft it:
- analyzes and reports on performance
- creates and edits campaigns, ad groups, ads and keywords
- builds and edits negative keyword lists
- changes budgets and pauses or enables campaigns
Every change arrives as an editable approval card, and nothing is applied until you approve it. Because the same workspace runs Google Ads, the agent can compare a keyword's cost per conversion on both networks before proposing a budget shift. Grow starts with a 7-day trial for $1.
Next step: install the UET tag, import your best Google Search campaign with a reduced budget, and turn off the recurring schedule until you decide which platform owns the edits.