Microsoft Advertising is rolling out a new feature that lets advertisers import conversion goals from Google Ads to optimize their campaigns.
Why it matters. This move aims to streamline cross-platform workflows, helping marketers work more efficiently across both Google and Microsoft’s ad platforms.
Why we care. This looks like Microsoft is trying to make advertiser’s lives easier when it comes to conversion tracking. However this seemingly beneficial feature may cause issues for attribution as the Google and Microsoft tracking codes are different on an advertisers’ site.
Details.
- Rollout begins in two weeks, gradually expanding to all customers.
- Conversion goals are imported by default with each import.
- Works with value-based bid strategies like Max Conversions.
What to watch. Microsoft encourages setting up a UET tag with Google Tag Manager to ensure new goals can receive conversion events.
Between the lines. This integration reflects growing competition in the ad tech space, with Microsoft seeking to make its platform more appealing by reducing friction for advertisers heavily invested in Google’s ecosystem.
Reaction. The news was shared first in an X post by Kirk Williams, owner, Zato Marketing. He also warned the PPC community:
- “PPC PSA: Heads-up if you currently import from Google to Microsoft, they’ll automatically import your conversions (and possibly mess stuff up!!!) in the next few weeks so you might want to shut that auto-import function off (since your Microsoft Accounts should already be set up correctly for conversions, right?).”
He then further directly told me:
- “I think the biggest thing is that importing conversion goals by default seems like a bad idea and I’m not entirely sure how that would even practically work since the UET and Google Tag are different codes on the site! I’m no developer, so it’s possible I’m missing something there.”
Opt-out option. Advertisers can uncheck Import conversion goal if they prefer not to use this feature.
The email. Here’s a screenshot of the email Williams shared on X:
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About the author
Anu Adegbola has been Paid Media Editor of Search Engine Land since 2024. She covers paid search, paid social, retail media, video and more.
In 2008, Anu’s career started with
delivering digital marketing campaigns (mostly but not exclusively Paid Search) by building strategies, maximising ROI, automating repetitive processes and bringing efficiency from every part of marketing departments through inspiring leadership both on agency, client and marketing tech side.
Outside editing Search Engine Land article she is the founder of PPC networking event – PPC Live, host of weekly podcast PPCChat Roundup, and brand evangelist at ClickTech.
She is also an international speaker with some of the stages she has presented on being SMX (US), SMX (Munich), Friends of Search (Amsterdam), brightonSEO, The Marketing Meetup, HeroConf (PPC Hero), SearchLove, BiddableWorld, SESLondon, PPC Chat Live, AdWorld Experience (Bologna) and more.
