Most businesses running paid search are on Google. Fewer are on Microsoft Ads — and the ones that have tried it often did so briefly, didn't see the volume they were used to, and quietly moved the budget back to Google.

That's an understandable decision, but for many businesses it's the wrong one. Microsoft Ads isn't a straight alternative to Google — it's a different channel with a different audience, different competitive dynamics, and in many sectors, meaningfully lower costs.

The Bing audience is bigger than most people think

Microsoft's search network — which includes Bing, Yahoo, AOL search, and search on Microsoft Edge and Windows devices — has a meaningful share of the UK search market. More importantly, that audience isn't randomly distributed. It skews towards older demographics, higher household incomes, and business professionals — partly because Bing is the default search engine on Windows devices heavily used in corporate environments.

If your target customer is a business decision-maker, a homeowner with disposable income, or someone in the 35–65 age bracket, the Bing audience is often a better fit than the broader Google population.

Lower CPCs and less competition

Because fewer businesses are competing in the Bing auction, CPCs are typically 20–40% lower than equivalent keywords on Google. In highly competitive sectors — legal, financial services, home improvement, insurance — that gap can be even larger.

The conversion intent of someone searching on Bing is broadly comparable to someone searching on Google. So if your cost per click is 30% lower and conversion rates are comparable, your cost per acquisition will be meaningfully lower than on Google for the same keywords.

Getting started is easier than you think

Microsoft Ads has a Google Ads import tool that allows you to pull your existing campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and ads directly into the Microsoft platform. It takes minutes rather than days. The interface is broadly similar to Google Ads, which makes the learning curve manageable for anyone already familiar with Google's platform.

One thing to note: conversion tracking needs to be set up independently using Microsoft's UET (Universal Event Tracking) tag. This is straightforward via tag manager but is a step that's easy to overlook when importing from Google.

The LinkedIn profile targeting advantage

Because Microsoft owns LinkedIn, it can layer LinkedIn profile data onto search audience targeting. This means you can target search ads not just by keyword intent, but also by the searcher's job title, industry, company size, or seniority — in the same way you would on LinkedIn itself, but within a search context where the person is actively looking for something.

For B2B businesses, this is a significant advantage. On Google Search, you can target by keyword but you can't filter by whether the searcher is a marketing director or an operations manager. On Microsoft Ads, you can.

Where Microsoft Ads works best

  • B2B and professional services — the LinkedIn profile targeting makes it particularly strong for reaching decision-makers
  • Finance, legal, and home improvement — sectors where Google CPCs are extremely high and the Bing demographic aligns well with the typical customer
  • Businesses already maxing out Google Search — extending reach at a lower cost without cannibalising existing Google performance

The honest limitations

Volume is the primary constraint. In most markets, Microsoft Ads will deliver a fraction of the traffic available on Google. For some consumer-facing businesses targeting younger demographics, the Bing audience simply isn't the right fit.

The platform itself, while improving, still lags behind Google Ads in features and reporting depth. Some campaign types arrive on Microsoft months or years after their Google equivalent.

The bottom line

Microsoft Ads won't be the primary growth driver for most businesses. But as a complementary channel that extends your reach, reduces your blended CPA, and reaches an audience that Google doesn't fully serve, it earns its place in more paid media strategies than it currently occupies. A properly structured 90-day test — with conversion tracking set up from day one — tells a very different story to a brief, data-light experiment. See how it stacks up in our platform comparison guide.

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