Microsoft Ads Integration Guide
Requirements
Microsoft Ads Integration activation guide
- Select your UET tag
- Under ‘Do you have this UET tag installed on your website?’ select ‘Yes…’
- If you have not placed the UET tag on the website please make sure to at least place it on a page and keep it there in order for the TAG to stay active, if the UET tag is not frequently loaded it will be identified as inactive after a few days.
- Click on ‘Next’
- Activate the Microsoft Ads Integration feature in wecantrack under Features
Microsoft Advertising Integration Guide Video
How to activate auto-tagging & automatic UTM parameter placements?
If you want your Microsoft Ads campaign data to also be reflected within our dashboard to for example analyse performance of keywords and campaigns you need to make sure that you activate the UTM placements within the auto-tagging setting.
How to track direct linking Microsoft Ads campaigns?
If you are are placing your affiliate URLs as tracking templates in your Microsoft Ads campaigns we can also help you to integrate their conversions in Microsoft Ads. In order to accomplish that you will need to create a Microsoft Ads Conversion Event just like we explained before.
- Go to Data Integrations > Platforms > Microsoft Ads
- Click on ‘Account’
- Place the Tag ID in the field and save
Make sure to include the MSCLKID variable in a subid parameter of the affiliate URL in the following way:
https://affiliateurl.com/?abc=xyz&subid=msclkid({msclkid})
Important information about Microsoft Ads audiences
It has come to our attention that numerous Microsoft Ads advertisers have seen a significant increase in impressions and clicks. However, this additional traffic is often of low quality which does not generate many conversions, thus increasing CPA tremendously and often resulting in affecting the profitability of campaigns.
Our investigation has revealed that this is most likely the result of an update Microsoft Ads recently had, which now incorporates in-market audiences into search campaigns. This has the unintended consequence of bringing in low-quality traffic, as well as significantly increasing advertiser spending while hardly delivering conversions.
To mitigate this issue, we advise taking the following steps: carefully review your campaigns to determine if they have been affected, and if necessary, exclude the in-market audience from your Microsoft Ads search campaigns.
How to view in-market audiences in your campaigns
As you can see below, the search campaigns are now targeting and including an “Audience” which significantly increased the number of impressions and clicks, while resulting in a extremely high CPA.
Note: if you have an MCC account you can also filter this on account level and you can find the total network segment performance instead of breaking it down by campaign.