Bing Specialist vs Combined Manager: Who Should Run Your Microsoft Ads?

Someone imported your Google campaigns into Microsoft Ads six months ago. Nobody has touched them since. If you already advertise on Google and want to make Bing work, your choice is between leaving that import alone, hiring a Bing-only specialist, or putting one manager in charge of both engines.

I have run all three setups. Either manager beats the unattended import. For most advertisers, the combined manager wins over the specialist too, but only if they treat Microsoft as its own auction, with its own search terms, bids and audiences. Most agencies that say they do both fail that test. Here is how to catch them.

The three contenders, before the comparison

• Import and walk away: Copy Google campaigns into Microsoft Ads, leave scheduled auto-imports on, and assume Bing will behave like cheap Google. Imported settings can bring overbidding, missing ad extensions and mismatched locations. I have also seen an imported Google conversion goal run beside a UET goal for the same purchase. Every sale counted twice, and automated bidding chased ghosts. The fix is boring and correct: pause the auto-import, choose one primary goal, and stop letting Google settings dictate Bing spend.
• Bing-only specialist: Put someone inside Microsoft Ads who knows its quirks and manages the channel on its own terms. They can give Bing the attention an import cannot, though they may lack a full view of where your next search dollar should go.
• One manager for both: Give one owner both search-term streams and the authority to split budget between them. I used to tell clients to keep the engines with separate managers. I was wrong for most accounts with meaningful Google spend. A combined manager who builds Bing separately can make a better budget call than a specialist working blind.

The test for that last option is simple: separate search terms, separate bids, separate audiences. If your manager cannot show you all three, you have the import with a monthly invoice.

Search terms: who catches Bing’s own bad queries?

Bing search behavior is close enough to Google to fool you and different enough to cost you money. Microsoft Ads offers phrase and exact negative match, but no broad negative match. Its negatives also do not filter variants such as plurals, synonyms and common misspellings the way Google’s do. Import a Google broad-negative list and it can quietly under-block. Same keywords, wider net, weirder queries.

That makes the sensible approach a two-step job: import negatives as a starting point, then review Microsoft search terms after 1 to 2 weeks. Bing produces its own irrelevant queries. A set-and-forget import will not find them.

A specialist usually wins on focused effort here. They mine Microsoft terms and build a separate negative list. A good combined manager does that work and compares the two term streams when deciding where budget goes. Ask for Microsoft-only negatives added in the last 14 days. No list, no evidence of management.

Bids and budgets: who stops Google prices crossing the border?

Microsoft’s thinner auction can clear at a lower price. A 2026 compilation puts average CPC around $1.37 on Microsoft versus $2.06 on Google, with cost per conversion around $31 versus $45. Those averages are not your bid targets. They are a reason to stop assuming the same bid belongs in both auctions.

I learned that watching an imported account hold position 1.2 on Bing at Google CPCs while impression share sat at 92%. We cut bids 30%, lost almost no impression share, and CPA fell the next week. The copied bid had been buying position we did not need to pay so much for.

A specialist can fix that with Bing-specific targets and a standalone budget. A combined manager should do the same, then decide how much of the total search budget Bing deserves based on marginal CPA rather than a fixed 10% allocation. That second job is where the combined setup earns its fee. If it only imports Google targets and checks Microsoft occasionally, it has not done the job.

Ask for last month’s Bing bid changes, with dates. Silence is a useful answer.

Microsoft-only features: who uses the levers Google cannot import?

This axis matters most for B2B accounts. LinkedIn profile targeting works as a bid layer in Microsoft search, using attributes such as Company, Industry and Job Function. The point is not to replace search intent with a LinkedIn audience. It is to adjust what you will pay for a search click when the searcher matches the buyer profile.

On a SaaS account I ran, Job Function with Bid Only adjustments cut SQL cost on Bing. We kept the keywords and bid more aggressively for the right job functions. A Google import alone would not have built that layer.

The setting matters. Bid Only preserves reach and adjusts bids; Target and Bid restricts impressions to the selected segment. Most imports need Bid Only, not a narrower audience by accident. Microsoft’s Audience Network placements on MSN, Outlook and Edge also deserve a separate decision: disable them or audit them weekly if you want pure search.

A specialist can set both correctly. A combined manager should do that and use what Bing reveals about audiences to inform Google decisions. Ask what your LinkedIn bid modifiers are and whether Audience Network is on. A pause tells you plenty.

Reporting: who knows whether Bing added business?

A clean-looking Bing report can still count the wrong thing. If an imported conversion goal sits beside a UET goal for the same action, one form fill can become two conversions. Automated bidding then learns from the inflated number. I have seen this inflate reported Bing ROAS by 40% until someone filtered the conversions column to primary goals only.

A specialist can fix the plumbing and report Bing CPA accurately. But a Bing CPA of $31 next to a Google CPA of $45 does not, by itself, tell you whether Bing brought in new customers or caught Google-branded searches more cheaply. When the specialist sees only Microsoft, that question falls between the two managers.

The combined manager’s advantage is a view across both engines: consistent UTMs, the same offline import for SQLs and closed-won revenue, and a de-duplicated report to inform the next budget move. That is the distinction behind this ranking of Microsoft Ads management options. Make them show how Bing earns the next dollar, not just how good its own dashboard looks.

Fees: who charges for the second engine, and what do you get?

Adding Bing often exposes the agency math. PPC management commonly costs 12% to 30% of ad spend per month. More spend can mean a higher fee even when the extra work is mostly maintenance. One pricing page lists Bing PPC as a $150-a-month add-on capped at 3 to 9 campaigns and 21 to 63 keywords. That is a constrained add-on, not much room for a separately managed channel.

Specialists can make more sense at a small Bing-only budget. One UK Microsoft shop charges from £145 a month, tiered by spend rather than as a percentage. But if you scale both engines, you may pay two managers to look at two tabs without anyone owning the allocation between them.

I prefer one flat fee for both. Search Ads at groas costs $1,499 a month for Google, Bing and ChatGPT, at the same fee regardless of spend. The price only wins if the work is genuinely separate. A cheaper way to copy Google is still a copy.

The head-to-head scorecard

The winner is the combined manager who can back up the right-hand column. A manager who cannot is not an alternative to the import. They are its billing department.

Verdict: one owner wins when Bing gets its own management

For most advertisers already spending real money on Google, I would hire one manager to run Google and Bing as separate channels. They can see what each engine contributes and decide whether the next $1,000 belongs on Google or Bing. A specialist can run excellent Bing campaigns. Working without the other side of the budget, they cannot make that allocation call.

Pick the specialist when Bing needs dedicated depth

Hire a specialist when Bing is already a substantial channel in its own right, not a tentative test: for example, B2B spending $5,000 or more a month on Microsoft with tight LinkedIn targeting, or a regulated account whose Bing search terms need daily review and whose Google learnings do not transfer. You are paying for focused work: separate negatives, careful bid layers, placement checks and clean UET goals.

If your combined manager cannot show that work, a focused specialist who shows it weekly is the better buy.

Pick the combined manager when Google leads the spend

If Google is your main channel and Bing is the incremental bet, one owner should see both term streams, set Bing bids using Bing data, and revisit the budget split as results come in. Do not buy the phrase “we do both.” Ask to see the separate negative list, separate targets and LinkedIn modifiers. That separation is the difference between copying Google and running Microsoft as its own channel.

The combined manager wins on budget decisions, not on the convenience of one invoice.

Keep an import only as a holding pattern

An import can sit temporarily while Bing spend is under about $500 a month and limited to branded terms, with auto-import paused and one primary conversion goal. Treat it as a way to validate demand, not as management. As spend grows, copied bids, unreviewed terms and duplicated goals become more expensive mistakes.

I kept one ecommerce brand on import for six weeks while Google tracking was fixed. When Bing passed $30 a day, we rebuilt it separately and CPA dropped. The delay cost us less than managing it badly from day one. Know when the holding pattern ends.

Five questions that expose a tacked-on Bing account

Ask these on your next sales call. I ask for screenshares, not promises. A manager running Bing separately should be able to show the settings and the work.

1. Which negatives did you add in Microsoft Ads in the last 14 days that are not in Google? Identical lists suggest nobody is mining Bing terms.
2. What are our Bing-specific bids and targets, and when did they last change? Look for a date and a Bing number, not a recital of Google tCPA.
3. Are LinkedIn Company and Job Function set to Bid Only, and what are the modifiers? “We use the same audiences on both engines” does not answer it.
4. Is Audience Network on or off, and which publisher URLs spent money last week? If they cannot open the website-URL report, placements may be going unchecked.
5. How do you decide next month’s Google-versus-Bing budget split? Look for marginal CPA tied to SQLs or revenue, not a fixed percentage or whatever the import happened to spend.

If you want one owner without two retainers, that is what we built Search Ads at groas to do: Google, Bing and ChatGPT under one $1,499 flat fee, with separate search terms and bids, LinkedIn layers managed deliberately, and a de-duplicated report tied to pipeline. I spent years doing this work by hand at 1am. I would not go back to the unattended import, and I would not pay a percentage of two spends for someone to babysit one. Hire the setup that treats Bing as its own auction, then make it prove the business it adds every month.