Microsoft Ads (Bing Ads) in Ireland

The honest answer is: as a complement to Google, almost always yes; as your only search channel, rarely. And that distinction is exactly where many agencies get it wrong when recommending Microsoft Ads to you. Let's break it down, because understanding the "why" saves you money and disappointment.

Bing —the search engine of the Microsoft network, present in Edge, Windows and increasingly in AI experiences— handles a notably smaller search volume than Google in Ireland. That's a fact and there's no point denying it. But volume isn't the only variable that matters in search advertising: what truly drives your profitability is the relationship between how much you pay for each click and how qualified that click is. And on that front, Bing has an interesting story to tell.

The real argument in favor of Microsoft Ads

Because there are far fewer advertisers fighting in the auction on the Microsoft network, the cost per click (CPC) tends to be lower for keywords of similar intent. That means that, for the same budget, you can capture clicks from people with the same purchase intent as on Google, but spending less on each one. For businesses with tight budgets —many SMEs in Ireland— that marginal saving translates into more leads for the same money invested.

Plus, Bing's audience isn't just anyone. Bing is the default search engine on millions of corporate computers, where people work, research vendors and make serious purchase decisions. The profile tends to be older, with greater purchasing power and more desktop-oriented. If you sell B2B, professional services, software, financial solutions or high-value education, that audience is precisely the one you want to reach.

• Typically lower CPC due to less competition in the auction.
• Corporate and senior audience, ideal for B2B and high-ticket sales.
• Targeting with LinkedIn data (industry, job function, company) that no other search engine offers.
• Fast start: your Google Ads structure is imported and adapted.

When it's NOT right for you (and we'll tell you)

If your business depends on massive volumes of low-ticket searches, if your audience is very young and mobile, or if you haven't yet fully maxed out your Google Ads account, then investing energy in Bing too early is mismanaging priorities. At Orbis we prefer to tell you straight: first you optimize Google, then you open Bing as a complementary channel. We don't sell fluff or channels that don't perform for your case.

The right way to decide isn't by gut feeling or by what worked for another business: it's with your own data. That's why, when we open Microsoft Ads for a client in Ireland, we do it with a fraction of the budget, our own measurement properly installed and side-by-side comparative reporting against Google. Within weeks we know whether the cost per lead on Bing justifies continuing to invest or reallocating to another channel. That measurement discipline is part of our Business Assurance approach: auditable processes, revenue engineering and decisions based on numbers, not promises.

We've been doing paid media for more than 18 years, with +500 clients served, 4.9★ in reviews and we are a Google Partner. That experience gives us the judgment to know, in your industry and your Ireland market, whether Bing will be a profitable complement or a distraction. If you want an answer grounded in your business —not a generic one— tell us about your case and we'll tell you transparently whether it's worth it, how much and why.

Good news: you don't have to start from scratch. One of the great advantages of Microsoft Ads (Bing Ads) is that it lets you import campaigns directly from Google Ads, along with their structure, keywords, ad groups, copy and extensions. That drastically reduces start-up time: what would take weeks of manual building on other channels is transferred here in days. But —and this "but" is important— importing is not the same as optimizing, and that's exactly where an experienced agency makes the difference.

What gets imported and what needs adjusting

When we import your Google Ads account into the Microsoft network, we bring over the entire architecture: campaigns, ad groups, keywords, text ads, sitelink, location and call extensions and more. It's an excellent starting point because it preserves the strategic work you already invested in Google. However, copy and paste doesn't work equally well on both platforms, and for several real technical reasons:

• The auction is different. With fewer advertisers, bid prices and competitor behavior change. The bids you had calibrated for Google are usually poorly calibrated for Bing —sometimes too high, sometimes too low.
• Search volume is lower. Some keywords with good traffic on Google have little or no volume on Bing, and vice versa: there are terms that perform surprisingly well here. You have to prune.
• User behavior differs. The corporate desktop audience behaves differently from Google's mobile audience. Time slots, devices and conversion devices change.
• Exclusive features aren't imported. Microsoft's crown jewel —targeting with LinkedIn data by industry, job function and company— doesn't exist on Google, so it has to be configured manually after importing.

How we do it at Orbis

Our process for clients in Ireland follows five clear steps. First, we audit your Google account to identify which campaigns make sense to replicate on the Microsoft network (not all of them do). Second, we import and clean up: we bring over the structure and prune keywords with no volume, adjust budgets and reconfigure bids for the reality of the Bing auction. Third, we install measurement with the UET tag (the equivalent of the Microsoft pixel) to correctly attribute every conversion. Fourth, we launch with calibrated bids conservatively and scale up based on real performance. Fifth, we optimize in continuous comparison against Google.

That last point is key: once up and running, the two accounts are managed separately. What works on Google doesn't always work on Bing, and vice versa. Treating them as a single cloned account is the most common mistake and the one that wastes the most budget. We optimize each platform independently and reallocate the budget toward wherever the cost per lead is lowest, month after month.

The typical result of doing it right is a fast launch without sacrificing quality: you leverage the work you already did on Google, but adapted to the particularities of Microsoft Ads. With more than 18 years of experience in paid media, +500 clients and our status as a Google Partner, we know exactly what to keep, what to adjust and what to discard in each import. If you want to know how your account would look migrated and optimized for Ireland, tell us about your case and we'll show you with numbers.

This is, without exaggeration, the most powerful and least-known differentiator of Microsoft Ads, and the reason why many B2B companies in Ireland should have it on their radar. The key lies in a single sentence: Microsoft owns LinkedIn. That ownership lets it offer something no other search engine in the world can match —not Google, not anyone—: adjusting your search campaigns based on who the person searching is, professionally speaking.

What exactly you can target

Within Microsoft Ads, you can apply bid adjustments —and in some cases direct targeting— based on three dimensions drawn from LinkedIn data:

• Industry. You can prioritize users who work in, for example, manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, technology or construction. If your product serves a specific vertical, you stop paying for clicks from irrelevant industries.
• Job function. You can adjust bids based on the person's department: finance, operations, marketing, human resources, engineering, general management. If you sell HR software, you speak to whoever decides in HR.
• Company. You can target by specific organizations or by company size, which opens the door to Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategies directly from search.

Why this is a game changer in B2B

Think of it this way: on Google, when someone searches for "billing software", you have no idea whether the searcher is the owner of a micro-business, a curious intern or the CFO of a corporation with 500 employees. You pay the same click for all three. In Microsoft Ads, you can raise your bid aggressively when the searcher is a CFO at a large company in your target industry, and lower it when the profile doesn't fit. That means your budget concentrates on the clicks that can truly turn into high-value customers.

For high-ticket businesses with long sales cycles —enterprise software, consulting, financial services, industrial equipment, executive education— this level of precision is transformative. A single closed customer can justify months of advertising investment, so paying a little more to reach exactly the right profile is a great deal. It is, literally, the ability to put your ad in front of the person who signs the purchase order, not in front of someone who is just researching out of curiosity.

How we leverage it at Orbis

Setting up LinkedIn targeting well requires method. It's not about turning on all the filters and waiting for magic; it's about building a profile of your ideal customer (industry, job function, company size) and translating it into bid adjustments that prioritize that profile without narrowing it so much that you kill the volume. It's a fine balance between precision and reach, and it's calibrated with data over the first few weeks.

In Ireland, where many B2B decisions are still closed through direct relationships and over WhatsApp, this targeting is especially useful for generating qualified leads that your sales team then handles personally. We connect those leads to your CRM so none of them goes cold and so you can measure, end to end, which industry and which job function are bringing you the best customers. With more than 18 years in paid media, +500 clients and as a Google Partner, we know how to combine the power of search with LinkedIn intelligence. If you sell B2B in Ireland and have never tried this, tell us about your case: you're probably letting your best audience slip away.

The honest answer is: it depends on your case, and be wary of anyone who gives you a fixed figure without knowing your business. But we can give you a clear, practical framework to make a good decision, because the Microsoft Ads budget isn't thought of the same way as Google's —it's thought of as a complementary channel, and that changes everything.

The practical rule to get started

For most businesses in Ireland, the most sensible thing is to start with a fraction of the budget you already invest in Google Ads, typically between 10% and 20%. Why that proportion? Because it has two goals: first, to generate enough data to assess whether Bing performs for your case; second, to do so without cannibalizing the budget of the channel you already know works. It's not about moving money from Google to Bing blindly, but about opening a controlled test channel with money you can measure.

With that fraction, during the first few weeks we watch the metrics that truly matter: cost per click, cost per lead and the quality of those leads compared to Google. If Bing is giving you leads of the same kind at a lower cost —which is the typical result with corporate audiences— then it makes complete sense to reallocate more budget there. If it doesn't perform for your industry, we'll know quickly and without having risked much.

What factors move the right number

• Your industry and competition. In B2B, financial, software or education sectors, where Bing's corporate audience is very relevant, a higher percentage is usually justified. In mass-consumer, low-ticket businesses, normally less.
• Your average ticket and margin. If each customer is worth a lot, you can afford to pay more per lead, and Bing —with its high-purchasing-power audience— fits well. If your margin is thin, Bing's lower CPC is exactly what you need.
• The available volume. Bing has fewer searches, so at some point the channel "saturates": no matter how much you raise the budget, there are no more people searching. Detecting that ceiling avoids wasting money.
• Seasonality. In Ireland the strong seasons drive consumption. Good management adjusts the Bing budget during those peaks instead of leaving it on autopilot.

Fee and ad spend: don't let them be blended

A point of transparency we always repeat: your investment is made up of two distinct concepts. On one side is the ad spend, which is the money that goes directly to Microsoft to buy the clicks. On the other is the agency fee, which is what you pay for strategy, importing, configuring LinkedIn targeting, measurement and continuous optimization. Any serious agency breaks both out separately, because blending them hides the real profitability of every peso. At Orbis we do it this way on principle: with Business Assurance, every peso is traceable and auditable.

Our practical recommendation for a company in Ireland is not to obsess over how much to allocate up front, but over how much each peso is giving you back. The side-by-side comparative reporting —Bing against Google— shows you exactly where your investment performs best, and from there the budget adjusts itself, guided by data. That's the logic of revenue engineering: the money goes to the channel that delivers the cheapest and highest-quality lead.

With more than 18 years of experience, +500 clients, 4.9★ in reviews and as a Google Partner, we've calibrated budgets for all kinds of businesses. If you want a figure grounded in your industry and your goals in Ireland —with fee and ad spend broken out— tell us about your case and we'll put together a clear proposal, no fluff.

This is one of the most important questions you can ask, because what isn't measured well can't be optimized, and in Microsoft Ads measurement has its own tools and particularities. The good news is that measuring Bing is perfectly possible and, done right, it lets you compare apples to apples against Google to decide where each peso performs best. We'll explain how it works and how we do it in Ireland.

The UET tag: the foundation of all measurement

It all starts with the UET tag (Universal Event Tracking), which is Microsoft's equivalent of the tracking pixel. It's a snippet of code installed on your website that records what users who arrive from your Bing ads do: which pages they visit, how long they stay and, most importantly, when they complete a conversion (a form submitted, a purchase, a call, a click to WhatsApp). Without the UET tag properly installed, you're flying blind: you see clicks and spend, but you don't know how many turned into real business.

That's why the first technical step we always take is to install and verify the UET tag and configure the conversion goals that truly matter for your business. We don't measure vanity —impressions or loose clicks— but rather the actions that translate into revenue. That discipline is part of our Business Assurance approach: every campaign has auditable measurement from day one.

The metrics that truly matter

• Cost per click (CPC): how much you pay on average for each visit. Here Bing usually beats Google due to less competition.
• Cost per conversion (CPA) or cost per lead: the queen metric. It doesn't matter how cheap the click is if it doesn't convert; what counts is how much each real prospect costs you.
• Conversion rate: what percentage of clicks end in a valuable action. It reveals the quality of the traffic, not just its quantity.
• Return on ad spend (ROAS): how many pesos of revenue each peso of ad spend generates. The ultimate measure of whether the channel is worth it.
• Lead quality: beyond the numbers, how good the prospect coming in through Bing is compared to Google's. Here Bing's corporate audience tends to surprise.

The side-by-side comparison: Bing against Google

Here is the real value of working both channels with the same team. Because we manage your Google Ads and your Microsoft Ads under the same measurement and the same conversion goals, we can put them side by side in a comparative report: same period, same metrics, same definition of "lead". That lets you see, without ambiguity, which channel is giving you the cheapest lead, which one the highest quality, and how they complement each other throughout the buying journey.

That comparative reporting is what turns the budget decision into something objective rather than a gut feeling. If Bing delivers B2B leads at a lower cost, we reallocate there. If Google dominates in certain types of searches, that's where the muscle stays. The budget flows toward wherever the data says it performs best, and it's adjusted month after month. That's revenue engineering in practice.

A key detail for Ireland: many conversions end in WhatsApp or a phone call, not in a cart. Serious measurement accounts for those closings —with clicks to WhatsApp as a conversion and, where applicable, integration with your CRM— so attribution reflects the real sale and not just what happens within the site. Measuring only the form and forgetting WhatsApp means underestimating the performance of your campaigns.

With more than 18 years of experience, +500 clients, 4.9★ in reviews and as a Google Partner, we deliver results you see in the dashboard, not just in the presentation. If you want to see exactly how we'd measure and compare your Microsoft Ads and Google Ads campaigns in Ireland, tell us about your case and we'll show you with real numbers.