Advertising & Paid Media
Microsoft Advertising
Also known as: Bing Ads, Microsoft Ads
Microsoft Advertising is Microsoft's paid media platform, formerly known as Bing Ads. It serves search, shopping, display and native placements across Bing, Microsoft properties such as MSN, syndicated partners and Microsoft's AI experiences including Copilot. Advertisers commonly run it alongside Google Ads, often importing campaigns to reach an additional audience at different costs.
What it is
The platform runs auction-based search and shopping ads on Bing and partner networks, plus display and native formats through the Microsoft Audience Network. It includes campaign types, audience targeting, conversion tracking and automated bidding comparable to other major ad platforms. It also surfaces ads within Copilot experiences, which brings paid placement into AI generated answers.
Why it matters
Bing's share of search is smaller than Google's but the audience is meaningful, particularly on Windows devices, in the workplace and in certain B2B segments. Costs per click are often lower, so incremental volume can come at attractive efficiency. As Copilot handles more question style queries, Microsoft Advertising is one of the few live routes to paid visibility inside AI answers.
How it works
Most teams start by importing existing Google Ads campaigns, then adjust budgets, keywords and bids for Bing's different traffic mix rather than mirroring settings exactly. Conversion tracking is set up with the Universal Event Tracking tag, and shopping campaigns are fed through Microsoft Merchant Center. Performance is reviewed separately from Google because query patterns, device split and audience demographics differ.
When it applies
It applies when you have search demand worth capturing beyond Google, particularly in the UK and US, in B2B, finance, travel and retail, or when you want paid presence in Copilot answers.
Examples
- A B2B SaaS firm imports its Google Ads account, trims broad match terms and finds cost per lead is lower on Bing.
- A retailer runs shopping campaigns through Microsoft Merchant Center during the Christmas period to add incremental revenue.
- A travel brand tests Microsoft Audience Network native placements on MSN to retarget site visitors.
How it is measured
- Cost per acquisition and return on ad spend compared with the equivalent Google Ads campaigns
- Impression share and lost impression share by budget and rank
- Share of total paid search revenue coming from Microsoft Advertising
- Click-through rate and conversion rate for placements served in Copilot experiences
Insights on Microsoft Advertising
Related terms in Advertising & Paid Media
- AI-generated creativeAI-generated creative is ad and marketing creative produced or adapted using generative models, including images, video, voiceover, headlines and body copy. Teams use it to produce more variants, localise faster and test concepts that would be too costly to shoot. It still needs human direction, brand review and legal checks before it runs.
- Asset groupsAn asset group is the creative container inside a Google Performance Max or Demand Gen campaign, holding headlines, descriptions, images, logos, videos and audience signals. Google assembles ads from these assets and serves them across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps. Retail campaigns can tie an asset group to a specific set of products through listing groups.
- Brand safetyBrand safety is the practice of preventing advertising and brand content from appearing next to material that could damage reputation, such as violent, illegal or misleading content. Brand suitability is the related, narrower idea of matching placements to a specific brand's tolerance and values rather than a universal baseline. Both rely on exclusion lists, content classification and verification reporting.
- ChatGPT AdsChatGPT Ads refers to advertising placements inside OpenAI's ChatGPT. OpenAI has publicly signalled that advertising is part of its commercial plans and has been testing and building out ad capabilities, so the format details continue to change. For marketers it represents a possible new paid surface alongside organic visibility in AI assistants.
- ChatGPT Sponsored AgentsChatGPT Sponsored Agents is the name given to a paid placement format in which a brand's agent or assistant can be surfaced inside a ChatGPT conversation to help complete a task, such as booking, quoting or buying. It sits alongside other advertising formats OpenAI has discussed for ChatGPT, where commercial results are marked as sponsored rather than blended invisibly into answers. Availability, naming and mechanics are still moving, so treat any specification as provisional and check current OpenAI documentation before planning spend.
- Conversational advertisingConversational advertising is paid placement inside a dialogue, whether that is an AI assistant, a chatbot, a messaging app or a voice interface. Instead of a static creative next to content, the ad appears as a response, suggestion or handover at the point where the user has expressed intent. The defining features are turn-by-turn context, a disclosure label, and the option for the user to keep talking rather than click away.
Primary research · August 2026
How ChatGPT Shortlists Software Brands
An audit across 10 categories and 60 buying questions. I recorded what ChatGPT reads, throws away and links to when a buyer asks it which software to buy, and what that decides.
- 60
- Questions asked
- 10
- Software markets
- 2,680
- Results read
- 367
- Links shown
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