The short answer
Microsoft Bing Ads places your ads on Bing, Yahoo and the search built into Windows and Edge. Australian volume is a fraction of Google's, but the audience skews older, wealthier and more corporate, and clicks generally cost less. It works as an addition to Google Ads rather than a replacement for it.
What management covers
- A read on whether your category has enough Microsoft volume to bother with
- Account build, or a rebuild of an import someone left running
- Bids and budgets set to Microsoft's click costs, not inherited from Google
- Its own negative keyword lists, built from its own search terms report
- Microsoft targeting, including the LinkedIn profile options where they suit
- Reporting that shows Microsoft separately, so you can see what it contributes
Who's actually on Microsoft Ads in Australia
Bing's Australian audience is not a random slice of the internet. It's mostly people who never changed a default, and that turns out to be a very specific group.
The corporate and government desktop.
Windows ships with Edge, Edge ships with Bing, and in a managed environment the standard operating environment locks both in place. IT departments have better things to do than change search defaults across four thousand machines, and in plenty of them they aren't permitted to. So a lot of Australian Bing searching happens at a work desk, during business hours, on a machine somebody else configured.
If you sell to businesses, to government, or to professionals who research at work, that's your buyer sitting in a channel most of your competitors have never logged into.
The demographic skew.
The audience runs older than Google's and towards higher household income, partly because it's weighted to people in established employment on employer supplied machines. Fewer students, more people with a mortgage and a super balance. That's why finance, insurance, legal and higher ticket professional services do better here than a youth focused brand ever will, and why we raise it on the mortgage and finance and insurance pages before most others.
Why it's usually cheaper.
Fewer advertisers turn up to the auction. The same query that has fourteen bidders on Google might have four here, and less competition means a lower cost per click for the same position. Add an audience with real buying capacity and the cost per lead often comes in below Google for the same offer.
Be clear about the size of it.
The volume is a fraction of Google's and no amount of enthusiasm changes that. If Google gives you a hundred leads a month, this isn't the channel that delivers another hundred. It's the one that adds ten or fifteen cheaper ones. Get Google Ads stable first, then add this.
The import trap, which is why most businesses conclude Bing doesn't work.
Microsoft makes it one click to import your Google campaigns, and that convenience is the problem. The import comes across with Google's bids, Google's budgets and Google's assumptions, none of which fit a different auction. Then nobody opens the account again.
Three things break. Bids sit at Google levels, so you overpay in a cheaper auction or the budget empties by lunchtime. Negatives and match types don't always translate cleanly, so the search terms report fills with rubbish nobody reads. And a scheduled sync quietly overwrites the local changes you did make, which is an infuriating way to lose a fortnight of work. An imported account is a starting point. Left alone for six months it becomes the evidence people cite when they say the channel doesn't work.
How we run Microsoft
We check the volume first
If your category has no meaningful Microsoft searches, we'll tell you and you keep the money.
We import once, then take it apart
Bids, budgets, negatives and match types reset for this auction rather than copied from Google.
We turn off the sync
The account gets managed on its own after that, with its own search terms review.
We report it separately
Microsoft's cost per lead sits next to Google's, so the comparison is honest.
Who this suits, and who it doesn't
It suits businesses selling to companies, government or professionals, anything with an older or higher income buyer, and accounts where Google click costs have become uncomfortable.
It's a poor fit if your audience is under 25, if the budget is small enough that splitting attention hurts, or if Google isn't sorted yet.
Why clients add it here
We actually manage it.
Weekly search terms, its own negatives, its own bids. The channel's reputation comes from accounts nobody opens.
Your account stays yours.
It runs on your Microsoft billing, and the history goes with you if you leave.
No lock in contracts.
Month to month, which matters most on a channel you're testing.
"Isn't Bing a waste of time in Australia?"
Not for the right business, and it's a fair question. The way to settle it is a fortnight of your own data instead of an opinion. If the volume isn't there, we'll say so and shut it down.