Importing Google Ads Campaigns Into Microsoft Ads: What Breaks and What to Fix

Because bids come across at the value you set for the Google auction, and the Microsoft auction clears lower.

The result is that you pay more per click than you needed to from the first day, and because volume is lower, it takes a while before the numbers are obvious. The fix is to reset bids for Microsoft rather than trusting the imported figure: start manual or enhanced CPC, watch the actual average position and cost per click for two to three weeks, and only move to automated bidding once there is enough conversion data for it to be doing something other than guessing.

Budgets have the same problem in reverse. Imported daily budgets are usually far more than Microsoft volume can spend, so they look fine and hide the fact that nothing is being capped.

They do not transfer as working audiences. Remarketing lists are built from your own tag data, and Microsoft has none until its tag has been live and collecting.

• Remarketing lists need rebuilding in Microsoft and time to populate.
• Customer match lists must be re uploaded, they do not come across.
• In market and similar audience mappings are approximate and sometimes just absent.
• Bid adjustments attached to audiences can import while the audience itself does not apply, which leaves settings that look configured but do nothing.

Check every campaign's audience tab after import rather than assuming. The gap between what the interface shows and what is actually applied is where most of this hides. Do not forget to set up LinkedIn profile targeting at this point, since it has no Google equivalent to import from and it is one of the better reasons to be on Microsoft at all.

Most assets come across, but partially, and the gaps are not flagged.

• Sitelinks and callouts generally import, though scheduling can be lost.
• Image and video assets often do not transfer and need uploading to Microsoft specs.
• Ad customisers and countdown functions can fail and leave broken text in live ads.
• Final URLs carrying Google specific tracking templates or ValueTrack parameters can break, sending clicks to error pages.

Check every final URL and tracking template before you enable campaigns. A broken parameter in an imported URL spends the whole budget on clicks that land nowhere.

Because Microsoft's location structure does not match Google's exactly, so anything precise gets rounded out to something broader.

Radius targeting, postcode lists and excluded locations are the common casualties, and the presence or absence setting can also default differently, so an account meant to target people in a location starts showing to people merely interested in it. For any local or regional business this is the fastest way to waste an imported budget. Rebuild location targeting manually, campaign by campaign, and check the exclusions as well as the inclusions.

Shopping campaigns import, but the feed behind them does not come with them. The campaign arrives pointing at a Microsoft Merchant Center store that may not exist yet.

• Microsoft Merchant Center must be set up and the domain claimed separately.
• A Google Merchant Center import is the quickest route, but review and disapprovals run under Microsoft policy and will not match your Google set.
• Feed rules applied in Google carry across with the import and are not always correct for Microsoft.
• Product group structure can import while the products behind it are still in review, so the campaign looks live and serves nothing.

More on the ecommerce side is on Microsoft Ads for ecommerce.

You build it from scratch. Nothing about conversion tracking imports, because Microsoft measures with its own UET tag and its own goals.

• Place the UET tag through Google Tag Manager alongside your existing tags.
• Create conversion goals in Microsoft, matching the actions you count on Google.
• Pass dynamic revenue on ecommerce purchases, not a fixed value.
• Use the UET Tag Helper to confirm the tag fires on the pages you expect.
• Check recorded conversions against real orders or enquiries before trusting it.

Do this before turning campaigns on, not after. An account that spends for a month without tracking has no usable history, and automated bidding starts from nothing. The overview of how we run both platforms together is on Microsoft Ads management, and whether it is worth doing at all is covered in Microsoft Ads vs Google Ads.