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Microsoft Advertising

Score7.7 out of 10

148 Reviews and Ratings

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What is Microsoft Advertising?

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.

Categories & Use Cases

Key Features

Learn about the best (and worst!) features Microsoft Advertising has to offer, as determined by TrustRadius' reviewers.
Based on 148 ratings of Microsoft Advertising's features
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Top Performing Features

  • Ad deployment

    Allows users to quickly and easily deploy new ad campaigns from within the tool.

    Category average: 5.6

  • Ad campaign creation

    Allows users to programmatically create ads and build new campaigns within the tool.

    Category average: 5.1

  • Ad bidding

    Automated bidding based on budget parameters and the click or conversion likelihood of an ad.

    Category average: 6.7

Areas for Improvement

  • Display advertising

    Supports banner and rich media display ads, including video, audio, mobile, etc.

    Category average: 4.8

  • Sequence targeting

    Allows users to create ad sequences that have several stages covering different topics or products; individual viewers are shown ads in a particular order across websites. This provides very fine control over brand messaging and storytelling.

    Category average: 2

  • Social advertising

    Advertising on social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

    Category average: 1.8

Most Frequent Users

Top 3 industries using Microsoft Advertising.
Based on HG Insights installation data
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#1 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

32.1%

2,982 installations of 9,276

#2 most frequent

Information

13.0%

1,203 installations of 9,276

#3 most frequent

Manufacturing

8.8%

815 installations of 9,276

Reviews

What users are saying about Microsoft Advertising.
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Great Way to Reach Enterprise Buyers

Incentivized
Verified User
Manager in Marketing (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Microsoft Advertising to advertise our product to those searching for relevant keywords. We are looking for a more sophisticated, sometimes older audience that tends to use Bing instead of Google. It also helps us maximize our reach past what we're doing on other search platforms. We are using a lot of what we're using on other search platforms on Microsoft Advertising as well.

Pros

  • Reaching a sophisticated audience at enterprise-sized companies
  • Firmographic & Demographic targeting abilities
  • Lower CPCs

Cons

  • Better visibility into the LinkedIn targeting they offer and easier ways to utilize it

Return on Investment

  • It has increased our pipeline amount by generating enterprise sized deals
  • Lower CPL usually than Google

Usability

Microsoft Advertising Ease of Content visibility plus reachability

Incentivized
Varun KohliView profile
Senior Executive in Information Technology at Vardhman textiles ltd. (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It broadens reachability on WWW.
It provides platform to have payments done on basis of clicks from end-user.
Analytical power for tracking performance.

Pros

  • Target audience on basis of location, interest, etc.
  • Platform that allows to place ads
  • Integrated UserSupport via Chat GPT

Cons

  • Google Ads is famous amongst Computer communities
  • Third party integrations are not on higher side
  • Limited ad format support

Return on Investment

  • Metrics used in Microsoft Advertising like top impression share, etc. gives is an edge over others
  • Linkedin is No. 1 Professional Network platform and this Microsoft platform is completely in-sync with this platform.
  • Video extensions add dynamism to overall ad creation mechanism

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Google Ads

Great Advertising Platform if you want to target USA Businesses.

Incentivized
Verified User
Professional in Marketing (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Microsoft Ads is used for lead generation. We run ads on the Bing and partner search networks. Users search, click on our ads, and then sign up for our app. It's a great advertising solution for us to target the USA, as that's where the majority of its searches are concentrated.

Pros

  • Advertising
  • Lead Generation.
  • Analytics and Insights.
  • Market information.

Cons

  • Would be great if we could solely target business customers.
  • More advertising reaching in Europe.
  • Analytics on conversions from app sign-ups - more information would be great.
  • Better conversion tracking.

Return on Investment

  • Return on Investment.
  • Generated Sales Pipeline.
  • Drive website Traffic.
  • Closed Won Sales.
  • Drive awareness.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Google Ads, Google AdSense, TikTok for Business, X Ads and LinkedIn Marketing Solutions

Other Software Used

Google Ads, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, X Ads, TikTok for Business

Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) review

Incentivized
Verified User
Employee in Marketing (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It helps us in new user acquisition from the paid channel - search engine marketing. We currently import everything from Google search ads directly to Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) platform via the importation function, as how it works is very similar to google search ads. Currently we would like to scale our accounts in Microsoft Advertising.

Pros

  • account manager support
  • new clear interface
  • supporting direct importation from google ads
  • new product betas

Cons

  • performance max does not work as well as google ads
  • reporting function can be improved
  • would like to see more 'overview' pagas where all the bid/budget protfolios from different accounts are listed

Return on Investment

  • It offers pretty high ROI on each booking(>90%)
  • It's hard to scale on many countries
  • Many more products should be develop compared to google

Alternatives Considered

Google Ads

Other Software Used

Google BigQuery, Google Ads

In my opinion, inferior to Google Ads, but a good supplement to expand reach and revenue

Incentivized
Bailey Witt, MBAView profile
Senior Digital Marketing Strategist in Marketing at Trellis (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are a marketing agency that runs Microsoft Ads for many of our clients as part of a multi-channel marketing strategy. Microsoft Ads fits as a supplemental channel to Google Ads to maximize visibility and impression share for key search terms for our clients on Microsoft search engines. In some cases it can be low hanging fruit, by capturing revenue with lower competition, but it doesn't always come with big scale potential.

Pros

  • It is easy to import Google Ads and keep them synced to Microsoft Ads, and make minor adjustments that stay different in Microsoft, such as bid strategies, ad group statuses, etc
  • Microsoft Ads in a lot of cases is less competitive than Google Ads, so cost per click is cheaper. This makes it so your budget can go a little farther, and you don't have to spend a ton on Microsoft to start getting results
  • The user interface is really easy to use. It feels very familiar if you have used Google Ads, and it is quicker to navigate than Google Ads in some cases as well.

Cons

  • In my opinion, the Audience network is horrible. I think it is a big waste of spend, and there's no way to turn it off completely, which is very dumb.
  • In my opinion, the level of customization with custom columns and metrics leaves much to be desired. You can't create custom columns based on conversion goals, or even create something like a budget utilization column to easily see if your campaigns are spending their full budgets.
  • In my opinion, the quality of keyword matching is not nearly as good as Google, so you get some really "far-out" search terms, and ones that don't make any sense. For this reason, conversion rates are typically not as strong as Google Ads, especially for shopping ads.

Return on Investment

  • From our agency perspective, Microsoft Ads is included in our fees to clients for search ads; however, being able to run effective Microsoft Ads as well as Google Ads helps us scale clients' businesses quicker, which helps us retain clients
  • From our clients' perspective, we see a varied return on ad spend based on the industry, but we have one averaging a 3x, one averaging 6x, and one doing nearly 20x return on ad spend. All of these clients are profitable, so Microsoft provides great value and additional reach beyond Google Ads.

Alternatives Considered

Google Ads

Other Software Used

Google Ads, Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Feedonomics