BING ADS / Microsoft Advertising
Bing Ads / Microsoft Advertising management
Often treated as an afterthought, Microsoft Advertising deserves a real look, not a token backup budget.
What is Microsoft Advertising?
Millions of people search Bing every day for products, services and solutions.
Like Google, advertisers bid on relevant keywords, and winning ads appear at the top of the results page, aiming to drive a purchase, a call, a sign-up, or a visit.
Why use Microsoft Advertising
Running on a similar auction model to Google Ads but with far less advertiser competition, Microsoft Advertising typically delivers better ad positions and genuinely lower costs per click; current benchmarks put it around 30-33% cheaper than Google on average, though the real gap varies meaningfully by keyword and industry.
The Microsoft Search Network, spanning Bing, Yahoo, AOL, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia, reaches over 700 million unique monthly searchers, and a meaningful share of that audience doesn't use Google at all, genuine incremental reach, not a discounted copy of your Google campaigns. The audience also skews older and more affluent than Google's average user, which is especially useful for finance, legal, B2B and considered-purchase brands.
Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant, integrated directly into Bing and Edge, is also changing how people search; billions of Copilot conversations now happen monthly, and Microsoft Advertising is evolving alongside it rather than staying a static, legacy platform.
Microsoft Advertising targeting options
| Option | What It Does |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Bid on relevant terms, adjusted for traffic volume |
| Location | Show a store address and target by city or postcode radius |
| Language | Match campaigns to a user's browser language settings |
| Scheduling | Target specific days or hours, down to 15-minute increments |
| Device type | Target mobile, desktop or tablet specifically |
| Audience targeting | Target by gender, location and age |
| Shopping | Show a product image and price directly in results |
FAQs
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For most businesses, yes, particularly alongside Google Ads rather than instead of it. Lower competition means lower costs per click and often better ad positions, and the incremental reach, the share of searchers who don't use Google at all, is genuine additional volume, not overlap.
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Current benchmarks put it around 30-33% lower on average, though the actual gap depends heavily on your specific keywords and industry, some categories see a much bigger difference, others see less.
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Ad budgets typically start at around $1,000 per month. Our management fee is 20% of ad spend, so cost scales directly with the budget you're actually running, get in touch for a quote scoped to your actual goals.
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Alongside, in most cases. Google delivers the larger share of overall search volume, Microsoft Advertising adds incremental reach at a lower cost per click. Running both typically outperforms either alone.
If you want to reach the searchers Google Ads alone can't, get in touch to speak with Lele, our PPC lead.
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