How to Set Up Microsoft Shopping Campaigns (Bing Shopping Ads) for E-Commerce Store on Shopify

Microsoft Shopping Ads (Bing Ads) can become an effective way to promote eCommerce projects and attract leads in addition to Google Shopping campaigns.

In this article, we will give you a step-by-step guide on how to set up Microsoft Shopping campaigns.

In our other article, we also cover how to implement Microsoft Ads Dynamic Remarketing to further enhance your eCommerce project’s promotion and lead generation efforts.

Microsoft Shopping campaigns are available in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, and many other countries. You can find the full list of countries on this page — What is Microsoft Merchant Center?

Microsoft Ads is one of the best ad platforms for e-commerce.

Microsoft Shopping Ads are similar to Google Ads. The ad contains an image, ad copy, price, and additional information about the seller (rating, etc).

These ads visually stand out from regular search ads and organic search results. So the users can make a decision about a purchase before they visit your website.

Where do Bing Ads appear?

Here’s what a Shopping ad campaign looks like on Bing:

Yahoo:

and AOL:

Watch this webinar detailing the basics and key terms of Bing Shopping Campaigns:

Read our article on Bing Shopping vs Google Shopping if you are struggling to decide between these two platforms for your shopping ads.

Follow the instructions below to learn how to run Bing Ads for your Shopify store.

Select the Tools section on the main page in the upper right corner and select the Merchant Center:

Select Create Store:

Specify the store name, select confirmation via the UET tag or Webmaster Tools, select or enter the store URL and enable automatic verification of the SSL certificate (if your URL contains https):

You must have at least 50 events recorded by the tag or the tag itself must be launched on the site within the last 30 days to confirm a store via a UET tag. In this case, the store confirmation can take up to 48 hours.

If the UET tag has just been created and has not accumulated enough data to create a store, you can confirm it with Bing Webmaster Tools http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster

Log into Webmaster Tools with your existing Microsoft Ads account. In the Profile section, fill the information About Me, Contact Preference, and Alert Preference.

In My Sites section, enter the store URL and click Add. Add information about your website. Complete one of the proposed verification options and click Verify. The dashboard will be available once the URL is verified.

To create a product feed in Shopify, install and configure the Simprosys Google Shopping Feed app in your Shopify account:

The decision to choose this app was based on our experience with different applications. It is the best in terms of cost and functionality ratio. In addition to Microsoft Ads, this application is also useful for Google Merchant and Facebook Shopping Ads.

You can use any other suitable app.

You can also import a product feed from the Google Merchant Center.

Go to the Simprosys Google Shopping Feed app, then to the Integrations section, and link the account in the app to your Microsoft Ads account:

The feed will be uploaded to your Microsoft Merchant account and will be updated automatically:

If you are importing a feed from Google Merchant, go to Import -> New import and follow the instructions.

You have two options for Shopping Campaigns on Microsoft Ads: 

• Standard Shopping Campaign,
• Smart Shopping Campaign.

The first type of campaign will give you more control. The Smart Shopping Campaign will give you the chance to maximize the return by using automated bidding and targeting on Microsoft Search Network.

Go to the Campaigns page, click Create campaign:

Choose the goal for the campaign: Sell products from your catalog

Choose the kind of ads you want to run — Search Ads or Audience Ads

Set a campaign name, budget, bid strategy, check advanced settings.

Set a high priority for your Microsoft Shopping campaign, select your store, which products you will advertise (all or filtered)

Set the region and other necessary settings, and Save the campaign.

If you decided to advertise all products, you must divide them into product groups. Enable flexible bid management for each group based on information about the margin or ROAS. As a result, the advertising budget will be managed efficiently.

To divide products into groups, select an ad group, go to the Product groups section and click on the arrow next to All products button.

Select the parameter to divide the products. Then mark the categories you want and save:

We divided products by Category, Product type. Other parameters are available, for example, Brand, a manually created parameter (Custom label), and others.

Each category can be subdivided up to 7 times:

Set up different bid strategies for different products (based on their margin or ROAS). After collecting statistics, you can use the automatic Target ROAS strategy:

The Microsoft Smart Shopping campaign is a more automated way to reach your goals with Bing Shopping campaigns. The campaign is now available to launch in most countries, where the Merchant Center is also available (you can find a list here).

Creating a smart shopping campaign takes less time than a standard shopping campaign. 

Just like creating a standard shopping campaign, you will need to have the Microsoft Merchant Center and Product feed. Be sure to update the feed at least once every 30 days. 

The Smart Shopping campaign, unlike a regular campaign, uses only automatic bid strategies. You won’t be able to run it on strategies with manual bidding. In particular, in a smart campaign, you can use:

• the Maximum Conversions strategy (with or without the target CPA setting), 
• the Maximum Value strategy (with or without the target ROAS setting). 

By automatically assigning bids based on multiple factors in real time, a smart campaign will show your product ads at the right time to the right users, allowing you to increase sales and increase ROAS.

Using real-time bidding algorithms, Microsoft can optimise your conversions while keeping costs under control.

Since the auto strategies available in the campaign focus only on conversions, the system will not let you create a Smart Shopping campaign unless you have a UET tag set up and conversions tracked. In this case, you’ll get this warning when you try to create a Smart campaign:

Maximize your e-commerce revenue today with expert Bing Shopping management from our PPC agency.

When you create a Standard Shopping campaign, you can choose where you want your ads to appear — on Search or on the Microsoft Audience Network. 

If you choose a Smart Shopping campaign, the system doesn’t allow you to select placements. 

The Smart Shopping campaign ads will show in search and in the relevant sections. 

On the search page before the search results:

In the Shopping tab:

To the right of the search box:

Follow the same steps to create a campaign, but select the Smart Shopping campaign subtype.

Then set the same settings as for the Standard campaign. 

An important point here: you may use only the automatic strategies in a Smart Campaign.

Choose the campaign strategy: 

• optimized for the maximum number of conversions,
• optimized for maximum value.

Now review the shopping settings. Select your store, which products you will advertise, choose the correct country, enable local inventory ads if you have a local retail store.

For the next step, find the country of your targeting, choose other settings if necessary and save the campaign.

Unlike Google, in Microsoft, you cannot create a Performance Max campaign. However, since October 2022, it is now possible to import Performance Max campaigns from a Google Ads account to Microsoft. When you do that, the Performance Max campaign converts to Smart Shopping and Local Inventory Ads.

What will change in the campaign when importing:

1. Campaign settings that import in full: budget, strategy, geotargeting, and merchant store.
2. Asset group names convert to group names. However, text and image assets are not imported.
3. Listing groups from Performance Max campaigns will turn into product groups in Smart Shopping Campaigns and Local Inventory Ads.
4. Product ads will be generated automatically.

However, there are a few things you must do to access the import:

1. You must have a Microsoft Merchant Center store set up. The Merchant Center store must have a product feed loaded and validated. Make sure you can renew your feed at least once every 30 days.
2. The site must have a UET tag. It should also contain the values of purchases.
3. Entities that are not currently supported by Microsoft are ignored during import. They are Final Uniform Resource Locator expansion, Text/Image/Video assets, and Audience signals.
4. You can set up an import schedule on a daily, weekly, monthly or immediate basis.

Local Inventory Ads allows advertisers to showcase their products to shoppers that want to purchase from a nearby store. These ads appear above the search results:

This feature is available to advertisers in the following countries:

• Australia
• Austria
• Belgium
• France
• Germany
• Italy
• the Netherlands
• Spain 
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• the United Kingdom
• United States

Check out the video on how to get started with Microsoft’s Local Inventory Ads:

Using Microsoft’s Local Inventory Ads you will increase your foot traffic by attracting people who are willing to purchase products similar to yours in the local area. 

Microsoft Shopping campaigns setup is similar to the Google Ads setup:

• Create a store in Microsoft Merchant Center
• Generate and upload a product feed
• Set up a Microsoft Standard or Smart Shopping campaign
• Divide products into categories
• Switch the campaign to an automatic strategy (or start from an automatic strategy with Smart Shopping campaign)

By setting up Microsoft Shopping campaigns, you can get more sales in addition to Google Shopping ads.

In July 2023, a new campaign type — Microsoft Performance Max — entered its open beta phase. It is designed to assist advertisers in connecting with a broader audience on Bing, AOL, Yahoo, Outlook, and beyond. Learn how this new solution differs from other ad campaign types in our article on Microsoft Performance Max VS Microsoft Smart Shopping VS Microsoft Standard Shopping.

We hope you found this article interesting and helpful. You can audit and optimize your ad campaigns yourself or order our services.

Visit our eCommerce PPC library and find more valuable guides and our cases.

If you have questions or want to share your experience on the topic, share it in the comments, or use a contact form to send your question.

Performance Marketing Specialist working with PPC since 2016. Specializes in Google & Microsoft paid traffic for eCommerce & B2B projects. In love with analysis. When not launching effective PPC campaigns, she is reading about the latest eCommerce and data tracking trends.