At a glance
Gross media cost on Microsoft Advertising (Bing + Yahoo + AOL search, Microsoft Audience Network display, plus LinkedIn audience extensions). The figure Microsoft will bill you for, before agency markup or rebates. Microsoft Ads typically delivers 5, 15% of the volume of an equivalent Google Ads spend, but at meaningfully lower CPC, treat it as the cheap incremental layer on top of Google.
| What it counts | SUM(Spend) across all enabled accounts and campaigns under the customer ID, summed at daily report grain. Includes search, shopping, audience (display), and LinkedIn-targeted campaigns. |
| Cost basis | Mostly CPC (search and shopping), with vCPM for Microsoft Audience Network display placements. Spend is the realised cost after auction, not your max-bid. |
| Currency | Account currency, set when the Microsoft Advertising account was created and locked thereafter. Multi-currency advertisers run separate accounts per currency. |
| Conversion attribution | UET-tag based. Default is Last click with cross-device on. Data-driven attribution is available but adoption is low; most agencies still run last-click on Microsoft. |
| Attribution window | Default 30-day click + 1-day view for primary conversions. View-through is excluded from spend reporting (spend is always charged at click or impression time, not at conversion time). |
| Bot / invalid traffic | Microsoft applies Click Quality filtering before billing. Cost shown is post-filter. Some IVT slips through, particularly on Search Partner Network and Microsoft Audience Network, expect 3, 8% of reported clicks to be sub-quality on those placements. |
| Cross-account aggregation | Per-customer-account. For a manager-account-equivalent view across multiple customer IDs, use the per-account drilldown. |
| Time window | T/7D/30D vsP (default 30D vs the prior 30D). Spend ingestion lag is typically 2, 6 hours, longer than Google Ads. |
| Alert trigger | spike >2σ vs 30D baseline. Catches budget runaway and pricing shocks (a competitor flooding the auction). |
| Roles | owner, marketing, finance |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Microsoft Ads (Bing) data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A UK home-and-garden retailer running both Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. The 30-day window covers 03 Apr 26 to 02 May 26.| Channel | Account | Spend | Clicks | Avg CPC | Conversions | ROAS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | Main | £42,800 | 71,300 | £0.60 | 1,420 | 4.8x |
| Microsoft Ads | Bing Search | £3,650 | 9,120 | £0.40 | 168 | 4.1x |
| Microsoft Ads | Microsoft Audience Network | £820 | 14,400 | £0.06 | 11 | 0.9x |
| Total Microsoft | (this card) | £4,470 | 23,520 | £0.19 | 179 | 3.5x |
- Microsoft is roughly 10% of Google spend, exactly the textbook share. Most ecommerce merchants find Microsoft delivers 5, 15% of Google’s volume on similar campaigns. If Microsoft is materially less than 5%, your campaigns are likely under-funded; over 15% suggests Microsoft is genuinely incremental in your audience (older shoppers, B2B, or Edge browser default-search demographics).
- CPC is 33% lower than Google (£0.40 vs £0.60). That’s the structural advantage: less auction competition. Microsoft Ads is rarely cheaper because Microsoft “thinks” your traffic is worth less; it’s cheaper because fewer bidders show up.
- Microsoft Audience Network underperforms. £820 spend at 0.9x ROAS is a classic display-placement leak. MSAN is on by default on most accounts, and most merchants don’t realise it’s running. Open the placements report and check Audience Network share, often a quick win is to disable MSAN entirely on accounts where Search alone is profitable.
- The prior 30-day spend was £4,180, ROAS 3.6x. Modest spend rise (+7%) with ROAS held, healthy expansion. A spend spike with ROAS falling is the warning shape.
- Spend up + ROAS up = scaling into efficient inventory (rare and excellent).
- Spend up + ROAS flat = healthy expansion.
- Spend up + ROAS down = scaling beyond the efficient frontier; investigate before holding the budget.
- Spend flat + ROAS down = audience or competitive change; investigate UET tag fires and Search Partner share.
- Spend down + ROAS held = budget cap hitting, leaving headroom on the table.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with Total Spend |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Ads ROAS | The efficiency partner. Spend without ROAS is meaningless; spend up + ROAS down is the warning shape. |
| Microsoft Ads Total Revenue | The revenue side. Spend × ROAS = revenue (within rounding). |
| Microsoft Ads Spend by Campaign | Where the spend went. Hero spend hides per-campaign concentration. |
| Microsoft Ads Spend vs Budget | Pacing read. Are you on track to hit your declared monthly budget? |
| Microsoft Ads Wasted Spend | Spend on zero-conversion keywords / placements. Usually 5, 15% of total Microsoft spend on neglected accounts. |
| Microsoft Ads Zero-Conversion Spend | Campaign-level cousin of wasted spend, full campaigns burning budget without converting. |
| Microsoft Ads Spend by Device | Microsoft’s desktop share is much higher than Google’s (older audience), useful for device-bid moderation. |
| Google Ads Spend | The benchmark. Microsoft spend should typically be 5, 15% of Google spend for the same campaigns. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Microsoft Advertising: Microsoft Advertising → Reports → Performance → Account Summary. Pick the same date range you’ve selected here. The headline Spend figure should match this card to within 1, 2%. For a per-campaign breakdown that matches our Spend by Campaign card, use Reports → Performance → Campaign performance with the Spend column visible. Other Microsoft Advertising views that look like the same number but aren’t:- Billing → Transactions shows invoiced amounts including taxes and prior-period adjustments. This card uses pre-tax media cost from the reporting API, the two will diverge by the local VAT/sales-tax rate.
- Reports → Performance → Final URL performance sums spend per landing page; rounded display can drift 1, 2% from the account total.
- Microsoft Audience Network performance is a subset; this card sums Search + Shopping + MSAN + LinkedIn extensions together.
| Reason | Direction of divergence |
|---|---|
| Real-time ingestion lag. Microsoft’s reporting API runs 2, 6 hours behind the UI for the most recent day. | Ours lower for “today” |
| Time zone. Microsoft Advertising reports in account-local time; Vortex IQ uses UTC for period boundaries. For a 30-day window the gap averages out; for “today” or “yesterday” it can shift the number meaningfully. | Either, by hour-fraction |
| Currency. Both this card and the Microsoft UI use account currency, no FX conversion. | None |
| Click Quality re-credits. Microsoft retroactively credits invalid-click costs back to your account 2, 14 days after the click. The first ingestion shows pre-credit cost; later snapshots reflect the credit. | Ours higher initially, converges later |
| Tax inclusion. Billing views include VAT/sales tax; reporting API and this card are pre-tax. | Ours lower vs Billing screens |
google_ads.gads_spend for matched campaigns. A meaningfully larger share usually means one of:
- B2B or LinkedIn-extended campaigns (Microsoft has the LinkedIn audience advantage Google can’t match).
- Older or Microsoft-Edge-default-search audiences (Microsoft over-indexes on Gen X+ desktop users).
- Google budget caps holding Google share artificially low.
shopify.total_revenue attributed to Microsoft / Bing CPC in your UTM tags should be larger than this card’s Total Revenue sibling, by the difference between Microsoft’s last-click attribution and Shopify’s source attribution. Use the commerce-platform revenue as the truth side and Microsoft Ads spend as the cost side for true business ROAS.