Microsoft Ads

Connect Microsoft Ads (Bing) for spend, conversion goals, suppression lists and click tracking.

Microsoft Ads (Bing) has no lead forms, so leads from your Microsoft ads arrive through your own EventsIQ forms, marked by the Microsoft click ID. Connecting Microsoft Ads lets EventsIQ read your spend, tell Microsoft which leads sold, and keep people who already bought out of your ads.

What you get
  • Cost tracking: spend per campaign, every hour, so Reports show return on ad spend.
  • Conversions: a postback or a routing lane reports the sale to an offline conversion goal.
  • Suppression list: sold leads are added to a customer list your campaigns can exclude.
  • Click tracking: the Microsoft click ID (msclkid) is kept with each lead.

Step 1: Connect Microsoft Ads

  1. Go to Connections and click Connect an account.
  2. Pick Microsoft Ads, then choose how you sign in to Microsoft Ads: Microsoft account or Google account (if you use Continue with Google on ads.microsoft.com). A sign in window opens. Sign in with the login that can open your ad accounts.
  3. EventsIQ lists every ad account that login can reach. If one is missing, give the login access in Microsoft Ads, then use Refresh accounts on the connection.

Connecting needs the Manage routing permission, because Microsoft Ads brings in no leads.

Step 2: Track the click ID

Turn on auto-tagging in Microsoft Ads (Accounts, Settings, Auto-tagging of Microsoft Click ID). Microsoft then adds msclkid to every ad click. On your traffic source, pick Microsoft Ads and the msclkid parameter is added for you. A lead with a Microsoft click ID is shown as a Microsoft lead.

Step 3: Read your spend

  1. Go to Integrations, Cost tracking, and click New integration.
  2. Pick Microsoft Ads, your Microsoft traffic source, the connection, and the ad accounts.

Microsoft builds a report for each ad account, so a run takes a little longer than other networks. Microsoft keeps six months of hourly spend, so past spend can be imported up to 180 days back.

Step 4: Report sales back to Microsoft

Microsoft has no event names. Each stage you report is an offline conversion goal that you make in Microsoft Ads first.

  1. In Microsoft Ads, go to Conversions, Conversion goals, and create a goal with the type Offline, for example Sold lead. Wait two hours before sending to a new goal.
  2. Then choose where EventsIQ reports it from:
    • A postback: in Integrations, Conversion API, pick Microsoft Ads conversion goal, the ad account, and a goal for each postback event.
    • A routing lane or a global event: add a Microsoft Ads postback and pick a goal for when a destination bought the lead. Leave the "not bought" goal empty unless you made a separate goal for it.

EventsIQ sends the click ID and the lead's email and phone, hashed. A lead with none of these is skipped, and so is a lead older than 90 days: Microsoft only takes conversions from the last 90 days, and only counts them inside the goal's own conversion window after the click. Results show in Microsoft Ads after up to six hours.

Retrying from Lead logs

Every attempt for the same lead is sent with the same time. Microsoft ignores a second conversion with the same click ID and time, so a retry of a lead that has a Microsoft click ID is not counted twice. Keep one Microsoft Ads postback lane per routing: for the same reason, two lanes reporting the same lead at the same moment would only have the first counted.

Step 5: Exclude people who already bought

  1. In Microsoft Ads, go to Tools, Audiences, and make a customer list if you do not have one.
  2. On a routing, add a Microsoft Ads suppression list lane and pick the ad account and the list.
  3. In each campaign's audience targeting, add the list as an exclusion.

Microsoft customer lists only take email addresses. A lead with no email is skipped with a reason. Microsoft takes up to 48 hours to update a list and needs about 300 matched people before a campaign can use it.

If something stops

If Microsoft stops accepting the sign in, the connection shows Needs you, the owner gets an email, and spend, conversions and list updates pause until you reconnect. Reconnect from Connections, then import the missed spend from the cost tracking integration.