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Metrics type: Key Metrics • Category: Ad Platform

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At a glance

Spend on keywords and search terms that produced clicks but zero conversions over the period. The “money down the drain” number, every pound here is, by definition, untracked or unproductive. Typical neglected Microsoft Ads accounts run 5, 15% of total spend as wasted; well-managed accounts sit below 5%.

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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.

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Worked example

A UK home-and-garden retailer running Microsoft Ads imported from Google. The 30-day window covers 03 Apr 26 to 02 May 26. What’s interesting:
  1. 23% wasted is high. Healthy accounts sit at 5, 8%. This account has a serious cleanup opportunity, roughly £1,200/month going to clicks that don’t convert.
  2. Microsoft Audience Network is the biggest single offender. £540 of the £1,195 wasted (45%) is MSAN. This is a textbook MSAN-on-by-default-after-Google-import problem. Action: pause MSAN entirely on this account or cap its share at 15% with a strict negative-placement list.
  3. Search Partner Network at 57% wasted is also poor, but smaller scale. SPN includes Yahoo, AOL, and small Bing-syndication sites; quality varies wildly. Either disable SPN or accept that the lower-cost clicks subsidise the search ROAS.
  4. Long-tail (£310 wasted across 200+ keywords) is the classic “should never have been imported” tail. Microsoft inherited these from the Google account where they had volume; Bing/Yahoo audience just doesn’t search for them. Pause keywords with zero conversions in 60 days.
  5. The top 10 keywords are clean. £2,180 spent, zero waste. Don’t touch what’s working.
The 80/20 cleanup pattern:
  • Tier 1 (5 minutes): Disable Microsoft Audience Network if not earning. Saves £540/month, that’s £6,500/year on this account alone.
  • Tier 2 (30 minutes): Audit Search Partner Network. Disable or cap.
  • Tier 3 (60 minutes): Add the worst-converting search terms as account-level negatives (use the Search Terms Report).
  • Tier 4 (recurring weekly): Pause individual keywords with zero conversions and 60+ days of spend.
After cleanup, this account would likely sit around £4,500 spend with the same conversion volume, ROAS rises 14% with no other change.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

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Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in Microsoft Advertising: Microsoft does not natively expose a “wasted spend” metric. The closest reconciliations are: Why our number may legitimately differ from a manual filter: Edge case. delayed conversions: If your conversion goal has a long lag time (e.g. consideration purchases that close 3, 14 days after the click), the 2-day exclusion isn’t enough. For those goals, the wasted-spend number is overstated. Two options: (a) extend the lag exclusion in your Vortex IQ settings, or (b) treat this card as an upper-bound and discount it by your typical conversion lag. Cross-connector reconciliation:

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Is wasted spend always actually wasted? No. The card defines waste as “spend on keywords with zero measured conversions in 30 days”. Two scenarios produce false positives: (1) UET tag-fire failures, the conversions happened but Microsoft didn’t see them. (2) Long consideration lag, B2B or high-ticket purchases that close 30+ days after the click. For (1) check tag diagnostics; for (2) extend the lag exclusion or accept a higher steady-state “waste” number than ecommerce peers. My wasted spend just spiked from £200 to £900. What happened? In order of likelihood: (1) Microsoft Audience Network ramped. MSAN is on by default and Microsoft’s optimiser found new placements; most of them won’t convert. Check the Network segment, MSAN is usually 50, 70% of the spike. (2) Smart Bidding learning phase after a goal change. Adding or removing a conversion goal forces 7, 14 days of exploration where Microsoft tries new keywords, many of which won’t convert. (3) A site issue broke the UET tag for a subset of conversions; spend looks “wasted” but the tag is the problem. (4) A new product launch added campaigns with no historical conversion data; expect 1, 2 weeks of high-waste exploration before optimisation kicks in. Should I just pause every keyword with zero conversions? No, not without checking volume and recency. Three filters before pausing: (a) At least 30 days of spend , don’t pause keywords still in the click-attribution window. (b) At least £30 spent , below that there’s not enough data to call it. (c) Search volume potential , a keyword with 30 clicks and zero conversions is genuinely bad; one with 4 clicks and zero conversions just hasn’t had a fair test. Use CPA by Keyword and pause only the entries with both high spend and zero conversions. Why is my Microsoft waste % higher than my Google waste %? Three reasons typically: (1) Post-import keyword bloat. When you import campaigns from Google, Microsoft inherits the full keyword list including long-tail terms that get no Bing/Yahoo volume; they sit dormant or attract a few low-quality clicks. (2) MSAN by default. Microsoft Audience Network is enabled on most imported campaigns and almost always has higher waste % than Search. (3) Search Partner Network share. SPN delivers cheap clicks but lower conversion quality, every account that doesn’t review SPN ends up with more waste than equivalent Google. My MSAN is showing 60% wasted spend. Should I disable it? Check whether MSAN is contributing assisted conversions before disabling. Open Microsoft → Tools → Conversion goals → Assisted conversions and look at MSAN’s contribution. If MSAN sits in the assist path for 10%+ of converting journeys, it has hidden value (mid-funnel awareness). If not, disable it; you’ll save the wasted spend with no measurable downside. Most ecommerce merchants don’t see meaningful assist contribution from MSAN and should disable. Does this card include “almost wasted” spend (very high CPA but >0 conversions)? No. This card is strictly zero-conversion. For the “almost wasted” view (i.e. converting keywords with CPA above your target), use Worst Performing Campaigns and CPA by Keyword. Both are useful in concert: this card surfaces total cleanup opportunity; CPA-by-keyword identifies the marginal spend to throttle. Is wasted spend the same as overspending? No. Overspending is “you spent more than your budget”; wasted spend is “you spent on things that didn’t convert”. You can be on-budget but with high waste %, or overspending but with zero waste. They measure different things, both should be tracked.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Wasted Spend is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Microsoft Ads (Bing) and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.