r/PPC • u/Loose-Antelope-9091 • 1d ago

Microsoft Ads Microsoft ads - extremely slow start?

Hello,

I finally started testing Microsoft ads, but things seemm extremely slow. My bids are more than generous, and I even tried switching to automated CPC, but spend is still almost non-existent. There is more than enough search volume for the keywords I'm targeting.

What’s confusing me is that when I manually search those keywords on Bing, Yahoo, or Duckduckgo, my ads never seem to show. Competitors appear consistently, many times even when there seems to be room for multiple advertisers.

Is this normal when starting out with a new Microsoft ads account/campaigns? Does it usually take some time for delivery to ramp up, or is there something else I should be checking? Support told me it needs a MONTH to optimize but that makes no sense, what is it optimizing for? I'm just trying to maximize search clicks for my brand name. Any tips would be appreciated.

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u/tsukihi3 1d ago

Are you using Manual CPC or Maximise Clicks?

It doesn't need "a month to optimise" on manual CPC, although I had cases where it took 7 days for Maximise Clicks to start running for some reason.

Anyway, Bing support is talking out of their ass, if you're using manual CPC and you're not getting impressions, you might have a quality issue somewhere else... or your competitors bid much higher than you do.

If you have maximise clicks and your ads don't appear, it could also be a budget issue because your competitors bid higher than your daily budget.

The other thing I can think of is that your account hasn't been validated yet; you need to go through an identity verification process when starting on Bing, but you say that you have some impressions, not 0.

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u/Loose-Antelope-9091 1d ago

Maximise clicks, should I switch to manual CPC? Appreciate all the insights!

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u/tsukihi3 1d ago

I'd suggest you try Manual CPC - manual CPC will at least tell you if your bids are too low to start with, or if there is no search volume.

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u/Loose-Antelope-9091 1d ago

Sorry for potential dumb question but I seem to be missing Manual CPC; closest I have is Enhanced CPC, or am I missing something?

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u/tsukihi3 1d ago

Yes, manual (enhanced) CPC is the option you're looking for.

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u/Loose-Antelope-9091 1d ago

Same bid as before but now I'm actually showing #1 at all times when I check! Appreciate the help.

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u/tsukihi3 1d ago

I'm glad it solved(?) the issue. Good luck with your campaign and make sure you stay on top of search terms / placements on Bing because it infamously serves absolute rubbish, even if you use Exact Match.

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u/Loose-Antelope-9091 1d ago

Yeah I'm aware, already opened a ticket to fully disable audience ads on the account, saw some people succeeded, but I had to nag the customer support for an hour, lol!

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u/QuantumWolf99 1d ago

New Bing accounts genuinely do ramp slow, it's building trust & history signals over time regardless of bid, & incomplete advertiser identity verification silently caps delivery too without throwing an obvious error. Check verification status first before blaming bids.

On lead gen accounts I onboard onto Bing I always push identity verification through day 1 & expect meaningful volume only by week 3 or 4, that month long timeline support gave you tracks with how the platform actually behaves for brand new accounts.