Microsoft Advertising Review 2026

What is Microsoft Advertising?

Microsoft's own search ads page quotes a 38.1% share of US desktop search for its network (Comscore, March 2023), a figure that tells you plenty about American office workers and almost nothing about a D2C brand in Surat. That gap is the right place to start any microsoft advertising vs google ads comparison for an Indian business. Microsoft Advertising, called Bing Ads until Microsoft renamed it in April 2019, costs nothing to join, charges per click on search, and lets you copy your Google campaigns across in minutes. Whether the extra clicks justify your time depends on who your buyers are and what device they search on.

Who sees a Microsoft ad: Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and Copilot

A search campaign shows ads on Microsoft Bing first. According to Microsoft's search product page, the same ads can also run on partner sites such as Yahoo, AOL, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia, and the search partner network includes publishers like CBS and Forbes. You can keep or drop those partners at the campaign level.

Beyond search there is the audience network, which Microsoft's current pages call the Microsoft Advertising Network. It carries native and display placements across Microsoft properties and partner sites. Performance Max campaigns use all of it: Microsoft says they can serve across search, native, display, audience and shopping surfaces, and reach people "across Microsoft properties, including Copilot." So when marketers talk about Copilot ads, in practice they mean Performance Max placements showing inside Microsoft's AI assistant, not a separate product you buy.

Shopping campaigns sit on top of a product feed from Microsoft Merchant Center, which can be filled by importing your Google Merchant Center feed.

Bing Ads vs Google Ads: how the two auctions differ in practice

Both platforms run an auction in which your maximum bid is a ceiling, not the price you pay. Microsoft's cost-control guide says your actual search cost "may be lower depending on competition", and that relevance, keywords, landing pages and bids all move it. The real differences are reach, targeting and tooling.

Google simply has far more Indian search volume, plus YouTube. Microsoft's case rests on cheaper competition in some niches, desktop-heavy B2B audiences, and LinkedIn data that no other search platform can offer.

Microsoft Advertising cost per click and what pushes it up

There is no rate card. Microsoft does not publish average CPCs for India or anywhere else, and its pricing guidance says costs change with competition, audience demand and ad relevance. Ignore blog charts that claim a universal "Bing is X% cheaper" figure.

What is published are the limits. Microsoft's API currency table shows an Indian Rupee account can bid as little as ₹0.50 per keyword and as much as ₹60,000. Inside those bounds you choose manual bids or automated strategies such as target CPA or target ROAS, and you control spend with daily, campaign or monthly budgets plus pacing. Ad extensions (sitelinks, call and location details) cost nothing extra; you still pay only for the click.

A sensible way to estimate cost: import your best Google search campaigns, keep the same bids, run them for two to three weeks, and compare cost per conversion, not cost per click. A cheaper click that never converts is not a saving.

How to import Google Ads to Microsoft Advertising without rebuilding

The Google Import tool is the reason most advertisers try the platform at all. You sign in to your Google Ads account from inside Microsoft Advertising, pick accounts and campaigns, and by default the tool copies most supported campaigns, ads, targets, ad extensions and other settings. Microsoft now offers three routes, called Quick Import, Smart Import and Advanced Import, and its 2025 guidance covers Performance Max assets and search themes, audience campaigns, shopping campaigns and full Merchant Center feeds.

Two settings matter. First, scheduling: the developer docs list run-now, once, daily, weekly, monthly and an automatic option, so later edits in Google flow across. Second, budgets: the import can raise or keep your budgets, which you should check, because a Google-sized daily budget may be too high for Bing's smaller Indian volume. Microsoft warns that not everything imports, so review bids, URLs, tracking templates and conversion goals afterwards.

Microsoft Advertising India availability, PAN and GST details

Indian businesses can open accounts directly. Microsoft lists India as a supported customer country with English and Hindi interface options, accounts can be billed in Indian Rupees, and there is an India support page with a toll-free number (000-800-4402074, weekdays 9am to 6pm IST) plus a 24x7 virtual agent and the @MSFTAdsSupport account on X.

For tax, Microsoft's account schema requires a PAN for an Indian advertiser account and accepts an optional GSTIN, described as a state code followed by up to 13 characters. Add the GSTIN at signup if your business is registered; the same docs say Microsoft cannot give tax advice, so ask your accountant how the invoices should be treated.

Payments are narrower than on Google. Microsoft's India payments table lists Visa and Mastercard credit or debit cards and says prepaid cards are not accepted. Because of the RBI e-mandate rules, automatic charges can fail on a card added after 1 April 2021, in which case Microsoft suggests topping up a prepay balance by hand or paying a postpay balance directly. How GST is shown on invoices, and the billing threshold your account gets, are set out in the Billing section; check there during signup before you plan cash flow around a particular limit.

Ads also need to target India: ad language and location targeting together decide who can see your ads, and Hindi does not appear in Microsoft's list of supported ad languages even though the interface offers it. English ads aimed at Indian cities are the usual starting point.

LinkedIn profile targeting: the one thing Google cannot copy

Because Microsoft owns LinkedIn, it can let you target ads by a searcher's LinkedIn company, industry or job function. For a SaaS firm selling payroll software to HR heads, or an IT services company chasing CIOs at banks, this filter is worth more than raw volume. A search for "payroll software" from an HR manager at a 2,000-person company is a different lead from a student's search with the same words.

Microsoft's targeting page does not list which markets get every audience option, so check in the ad group targeting tab whether LinkedIn dimensions show for your Indian locations before you build a plan around them.

Setting up the UET tag before your first rupee is spent

Universal event tracking is Microsoft's site tag for conversions and remarketing. Create a UET tag in your account, add the code to every page (directly or through a tag manager), then define conversion goals such as a thank-you page URL, a purchase event or a form submission. Without the uet tag in place, automated bidding has no signal and remarketing lists stay empty, so do this before switching campaigns on.

If you already fire Google conversion events, map the same actions. Matching goals across both platforms keeps your reporting honest.

Microsoft Advertising Editor for bulk changes

The editor tool is Microsoft's downloadable desktop app for account work. You download one or more accounts, make bulk edits offline (find and replace across headlines, bid changes on hundreds of keywords, pasting new ad groups from a spreadsheet), then post the changes back. Agencies handling ten client accounts will use it daily; a solo founder with one campaign can live in the web interface.

Is a microsoft advertising vs google ads comparison worth running on an Indian budget?

Treat it as a test, not a switch. Run Google first, because that is where Indian demand lives. Once your Google search campaigns convert at a steady cost, import them and give Microsoft a separate budget of perhaps 10 to 20 percent of search spend for a month. B2B, finance, education and software buyers on office laptops tend to suit it best. A local plumber in Lucknow will find few Bing searches to pay for.

Gaps to accept before you commit

• Thin Indian volume. Bing's reach figures are US desktop numbers. Expect far fewer impressions than Google in India.
• Fewer formats. There is no YouTube-scale video inventory or Maps placement.
• Help centre friction. Many billing and policy articles load only inside the help app, which makes quick answers slower than they should be.
• Import is not set-and-forget. Scheduled imports can overwrite manual tweaks unless you tune what syncs.

A first week on Microsoft Advertising, step by step

• Day 1: create the account with your business PAN and GSTIN, choose INR, and add a payment method in Billing.
• Day 2: install the UET tag and set up two or three conversion goals.
• Day 3: run Google Import on your best two search campaigns; lower the budgets.
• Day 4: add LinkedIn profile adjustments if your offer is B2B, and add negative keywords.
• Days 5 to 7: watch search terms and cost per conversion, and only then consider shopping campaigns or Performance Max.