Microsoft Ads: Tips and best practices

Microsoft Ads: Tips and best practices#

Choosing a conversion metric#

Microsoft Advertising deprecated the Conversions, AllConversions, and ViewThroughConversions columns in 2022. These columns still appear in the field list, but Microsoft returns 0 in them for all current data.

Use the following columns instead:

  • ConversionsQualified instead of Conversions

  • AllConversionsQualified instead of AllConversions

  • ViewThroughConversionsQualified instead of ViewThroughConversions

Note

The Qualified columns return decimal values, not whole numbers. Microsoft returns fractional conversions when a conversion is attributed partially, so map these fields to a decimal type in your data extract.

Understanding the difference between Conversions and All conversions#

Each conversion goal in Microsoft Advertising has an ExcludeFromBidding property. Goals with this property enabled are excluded from ConversionsQualified but included in AllConversionsQualified.

This is why the two columns return different values for the same date range. It is not a data discrepancy.

Segmenting conversions by goal#

By default, conversion metrics are aggregated across all of your conversion goals. To see them per goal, add the Goal and GoalType columns to your datastream. These columns are available on most performance report types, and on the Conversion Performance Report and Goals And Funnels Report in particular.

Important

Goal and GoalType cannot be combined with impression share metrics such as ImpressionSharePercent, AbsoluteTopImpressionSharePercent, or ClickSharePercent. Microsoft Advertising treats these as mutually exclusive groups, so you cannot collect goal segmentation and impression share in the same report. Use two datastreams if you need both.

The same restriction applies to the BidMatchType, DeviceOS, and TopVsOther columns on the Account Performance, Ad Group Performance, and Campaign Performance report types.

Finding budget fields#

Budget information is spread across three report types, and the one you need depends on which value you want:

  • Monthly budget, daily spend, and month-to-date spend: use the Budget Summary Report. This report supports daily aggregation only.

  • Budget name, status, and association status: use the Campaign Performance Report.

  • Remaining budget, spent budget, and spend caps: use the Search Insertion Order Report.

The Ad Group Performance Report does not contain budget fields. It contains metrics derived from budget, such as ImpressionLostToBudgetPercent, but not the budget values themselves.

Collecting rows with no performance data#

By default, Adverity excludes rows where every performance metric is zero. Select Include empty rows to keep them.

This option is available for the Ad Performance, Campaign Performance, Ad Group Performance, and Asset Group Performance report types. For all other report types, rows with no performance data are always excluded, which is a common reason for row counts differing from the Microsoft Advertising interface.

Identifying the currency of your data#

Adverity collects monetary values in the currency of each Microsoft Advertising account and does not convert them. If your datastream collects data for accounts that use different currencies, the values in a cost column are not comparable to each other.

Add the CurrencyCode column so that each row identifies its own currency.

Note

CurrencyCode is not available for every report type. If the report type you need does not offer it, create one datastream per account so that the currency of each data extract is unambiguous.

Understanding conversion tracking requirements#

Conversion columns return data only for accounts that use Universal Event Tracking (UET) in Microsoft Advertising. If UET is not configured for an account, conversion columns are collected but contain no data.

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