Acquisio vs. Microsoft Advertising

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Acquisio
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Acquisio is a performance marketing solution that enables digital marketers to manage, report, and optimize on all digital advertising initiatives in one easy-to-use dashboard, across search, social, and display. According to the vendor, this solution provides the most powerful optimization algorithm on the market which enables users to set more accurate bids and deliver more clicks at a lower cost per click. The vendor’s value proposition is that this unique high frequency, predictive…N/A
Microsoft Advertising
Score 7.7 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) contains Microsoft's advertising solutions. Advertising formats include search (Microsoft Search ads), Display and Native ads, Retail Media, and Video and Connected TV (CTV) ads. Services include Performance Max, the company's conversion optimization AI assistant and guide.N/A
Pricing
AcquisioMicrosoft Advertising
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AcquisioMicrosoft Advertising
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AcquisioMicrosoft Advertising
Considered Both Products
Acquisio
Chose Acquisio
Although Kenshoo might be a good fit for some agencies, Acquisio is an infinitely better fit for ours. Acquisio has allowed us to automate and scale in a way that simply would not have been possible with Kenshoo. Also, in my opinion, Acquisio offers a far superior bid …
Chose Acquisio
In terms of reporting Acquisio offers a much more flexible platform where you can fully customize and schedule reports as needed.
Chose Acquisio
We have started using Domo since we began using Acquisio and are extremely happy with Domo. We will continue to use Acquisio though because of the ability to directly manage paid search ads and the ability to create simple reports quickly. Also considering the cost of Domo, …
Chose Acquisio
I have worked with Adwords, Facebook and Acquisio
Chose Acquisio
We looked at other players like Marin and Kenshoo but found them to be overpriced and service to be lacking. Acquisio is very customer responsive, and the product is priced right.
Chose Acquisio
Marin is great for smaller teams, but lacks in the sexy reporting. Kenshoo is the closest rival and a little more difficult to set up, but once you get it running it's great.
Chose Acquisio
Marin and Acquisio both have their advantages. Marin has an easier editor platform to make quick bid and budget changes along with a reporting system that has the ability to do web queries for excel reporting, but the platform lacks intuitive or helpful automation. Whereas, …
Chose Acquisio
We actually use BrightEdge, Netsuite, Adwords, and a few other platforms - each platform delivers results in different areas that we would not use Acquisio for. Acquisio's advantage for us is being able to generate great looking reports for clients with complex, ongoing …
Chose Acquisio
Not quite as seamless as Marin whose editing tool seemed better but also not as expensive and fit better into our agency's budget.
Microsoft Advertising
Chose Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft is the best if you want to target the USA business; it has a great standing against these other platforms.
Chose Microsoft Advertising
We're using both. Basically using directly importation from google to Microsoft Advertising. If you already run ads on google, it's very easy to copy the structure on Microsoft Advertising as well.
Chose Microsoft Advertising
In my opinion, Microsoft Ads is definitely inferior to Google Ads as a platform, but there's no reason you can't use both. We have never chosen Microsoft Ads solely over Google Ads, it's only a supplement because Google Ads provides so much more scale potential from its search …
Chose Microsoft Advertising
Because of duckduckgo we have to use Microsoft advertising and it turns out as the worst user experience given the company of this magnitude. Worst.
Chose Microsoft Advertising
This is a platform that had potential if only it was run by ethically minded people. It's not.
Chose Microsoft Advertising
Not a good experience I will you skippable ads on Youtube.
Chose Microsoft Advertising
Technically, there is no comparison with the above systems - just a lack of features and a bunch of technical bugs.
Chose Microsoft Advertising
The cost per click is definitely lower than Google Ads. But the drawback of it is that the audience size is smaller as well. The reason we picked Microsoft Advertising is that it is a good complementary solution to Google Ads. We use both of them with different budgets and we …
Chose Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft Advertising supports Google Ads integration, one of the efficient paid search engine extension. More so, Microsoft Advertising has a responsive, and informative live chat option, simplifying the customer help services. Microsoft Advertising supports conversion …
Chose Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft advertising is a creative, and diverse marketing option, which makes it preferred by many enterprises. The success rate of Microsoft advertising due to its stability and consistency is another huge merit, and this results to practical results. Finally, Microsoft …
Chose Microsoft Advertising
Obviously Google is a huge competitor. Typically Google is top of the game for many advertising solutions including search. Microsoft ads has a lower scale and reach compared to Google. However, Microsoft ads audience does not overlap much with Googles, providing incremental …
Chose Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft Advertising has more trustworthy and reliable keyword targeting, but the volume is much lower on Bing.com and related networks than on Google.com and related networks. The display capabilities and performance is lower on Bing as well. The import tool is easy to use …
Chose Microsoft Advertising
It's a smaller market and different demographic, but CPCs can be lower so your ROI can be decent. Overall the interface feels a bit clunky and it's hard to find some features, but that may be because I spend most of my time in Google Ads.

We picked Microsoft Ads because it's …
Chose Microsoft Advertising
[Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads)] has access to superior traffic volume and ability / capability to spend ad dollars. [Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads)] is really the only paid search advertising option that competes with google ads in any capacity whether …
Chose Microsoft Advertising
Unfortunately, I don't think anyone has been able to properly and effectively compete with Google. They are the mammoth in the space - so therefore, I don't think either Bing or Gemini have had a fair shot to showcase their potential worth.
Again, I have found it very difficult …
Chose Microsoft Advertising
Bing Ads has a bit less traffic, however, its syndicated network is preferred because we can see where traffic is coming from. I would like to see custom mods for publisher sites to become a feature.
Chose Microsoft Advertising
You have lower volume on Bing ads but the traffic is usually better and you get lower CPC with higher conversion rates.
Chose Microsoft Advertising
Bing Ads works similarly to Google Ads (Formerly AdWords) in the fact that it is search engine marketing. It differs in how it reaches a slightly more educated audience, has lower CPC (less competition) and often a better ROI. "Green technologies", solar, wind, etc. work …
Chose Microsoft Advertising
Bing Ads is an excellent complement to Google Ads because most likely, it is reaching a different audience. Depending on where your traffic is coming from, one search engine may be better to focus on than the other.
Chose Microsoft Advertising
Less cost than Google Ads but smaller audience. The interface is not as user-friendly and it is somewhat slow. The Bing Ads audience is smaller as they only have about 20% of the search market place. So you are limited by the number of searches vs. budget usually.
Chose Microsoft Advertising
In general, Bing Ads as an alternative to Google Ads is pretty weak. As mentioned, while it does have its use cases, many times these are limited as well. With Bing, it seems like there is always a large drop off in the quality of traffic versus advertising products, which …
Chose Microsoft Advertising
Bing is definitely most comparable to Google; in terms of audience sizes, it has about 30% of the traffic that Google Ads can drive; however, its costs are much more efficient, and this additional inventory is less competitive. Additionally, Bing has some features not available …
Chose Microsoft Advertising
As mentioned, it is overall more cost effective and you cannot afford to ignore all that Search traffic.
Features
AcquisioMicrosoft Advertising
Ad Campaigns
Comparison of Ad Campaigns features of Product A and Product B
Acquisio
-
Ratings
Microsoft Advertising
3.9
Ratings
3% below category average
Ad campaign creation00 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Ad deployment00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Display advertising00 Ratings1.90 Ratings
Ad display and retargeting segmentation00 Ratings3.60 Ratings
Sequence targeting00 Ratings1.00 Ratings
Contextual advertising00 Ratings4.50 Ratings
Social advertising00 Ratings1.00 Ratings
Ad Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Ad Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Acquisio
-
Ratings
Microsoft Advertising
5.3
Ratings
1% above category average
Ad dashboards00 Ratings4.70 Ratings
Ad performance reports00 Ratings4.70 Ratings
Ad conversion tracking00 Ratings6.30 Ratings
Ad attribution reporting00 Ratings5.40 Ratings
Ad forecasting and optimization00 Ratings5.40 Ratings
Ad Auctions
Comparison of Ad Auctions features of Product A and Product B
Acquisio
-
Ratings
Microsoft Advertising
6.6
Ratings
3% below category average
Ad bidding00 Ratings6.60 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AcquisioMicrosoft Advertising
Small Businesses
WordStream
WordStream
Score 6.9 out of 10
WordStream
WordStream
Score 6.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
WordStream
WordStream
Score 6.9 out of 10
WordStream
WordStream
Score 6.9 out of 10
Enterprises
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 8.6 out of 10
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 8.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AcquisioMicrosoft Advertising
Likelihood to Recommend
6.0
(0 ratings)
5.9
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
5.4
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
6.0
(0 ratings)
6.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AcquisioMicrosoft Advertising
Likelihood to Recommend
Acquisio is a really good platform to manage search and display campaigns, but it is probably not the best if you want to manage social advertising. If you are really savvy with reporting I would strongly recommend the use of Acquisio. You can make custom reports and send them automatically to your customers. That gives you more time to focus on optimization instead of reporting.
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Despite using our account for advertising with every other social media company, Microsoft flagged ours as fraudulent. After dealing with them for weeks, we finally got to a manager, who said that they didn’t know anything, couldn’t provide any information, and was unable to do anything about it. It seems odd, but it would flagger account every time we try to upload the campaigns from Google directly into their ad manager. I would suggest if you try and use their platform, don’t tell them you’re using Google cause they seem to have a thing against it. Once your account is flagged, they have no reasonable way of resolving it, nor they are able to offer any support. You’re better off to just try a different way. Ultimately, just don’t use Microsoft advertising if you can possibly avoid it. Hopefully soon DuckDuckGo will have their own advertising platform and we can eliminate Microsoft given the terrible time we have working with this one of many, social media platforms.
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Pros
  • Easy to create reports for digital campaigns
  • Easy to make bulk changes to paid search campaigns
  • Easy to ensure consistency of paid search campaigns across Google and Bing
  • Ability to automate reports and email them to specific users on a scheduled basis
  • Bid and budget automation for paid search campaigns is successful at hitting CPA targets
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  • Familiar interface, offers editor for bulk changes, adding negative keywords is much easier than in Google Ads
  • Nice reporting tools within the interface, detailed reports can be made fairly easily
  • Had very nice tools to help import/export ads directly from Google Ads, which saves a ton of time
Read full review
Cons
  • Support isn't horrible, but it could be better.
  • Report template creation could be a little easier. Right now, when you create a component, it goes to the bottom and you have to drag it up to where you want it to be. This feels inefficient.
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  • Bing's ad platform could definitely use some improvements - it hasn't been updated in a long time, and it feels very outdated.
  • We feel that the optimization algorithms don't always perform as well for Bing Ads as they do in Google Ads (optimize for conversions, etc.).
  • It would be great to have even more integrations with LinkedIn audience targeting offered - right now, you can just make some bid optimizations in a couple of areas; we'd really like to get more robust options there, and maybe even things like cross-platform tracking.
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Likelihood to Renew
I think the platform, with the latest release updates has a lot of great potential. The main decision, currently, is price and how that gets passed on to our clients. There has to be a conscious decision made on platform cost vs client spend and overall budget vs revenue.
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We have had good success with it over all of our clients. We continually recommend bing to reach "the rest of the searchers".
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Usability
It's solid but definitely a bit gliche and I feel could be easier to navigate
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It's very easy to use overall. It has an import from Google Ads to make things simpler. Overall, I would say you can get up and running very quickly. It's similar to other platforms, so if you have used them, it's intuitive.
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Support Rating
Within the interface there is an instant chat support feature that you can use to get help right away without having to pick up the phone or look for an email address. We have have an account manager who responds to emails quickly and is always helpful. Anytime issues require further tech support we are kept up to date on the progress of the issue and they are usually resolved the same day.
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Our Bing Ads reps are very good and attentive. They've offered good recommendations and are quick to resolve unexpected issues and problems. Occasionally they have roped in technical support folks that have been friendly and helpful too. The general helpline for Bing Ads is also very good, especially when compared to Google's customer support.
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Implementation Rating
They handled it well.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Although Kenshoo might be a good fit for some agencies, Acquisio is an infinitely better fit for ours. Acquisio has allowed us to automate and scale in a way that simply would not have been possible with Kenshoo. Also, in my opinion, Acquisio offers a far superior bid optimization and budget management system.
Read full review
Obviously Google is a huge competitor. Typically Google is top of the game for many advertising solutions including search. Microsoft ads has a lower scale and reach compared to Google. However, Microsoft ads audience does not overlap much with Googles, providing incremental reach. Although Microsoft ads lags a bit behind in adapting the new updates that Google comes out with, their customer service is very good and they are likely to go out of their way to adapt their platform to your needs whereas their competitor does not
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Return on Investment
  • Acquisio has helped us to improve relationships with our PPC clients.
  • The customizable reports have helped our consultants gain better insight into how to help their clients as well.
  • The standards we were able to reach using this platform have enabled us to be the top provider in our market.
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  • We've had a very hard time spending our budgets on Bing which has caused us a lot of extra work on our end. We've essentially had to move that money back to Google or other platforms.
  • It does have an easy import from Google so you're not doubling efforts.
  • The CPCs tend to be less expensive than Google - which is always good for business owners.
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ScreenShots

Acquisio Screenshots

Screenshot of Client Center, view of Key Performance Metrics targets