Google Ads vs. Microsoft Advertising

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Ads
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Google Ads (formerly AdWords) is Google's pay-per-click online advertising program. With Google Ads users set their budget and choose where their ads appear in search listings, and on partner websites. Google Ads uses cost-per-click (CPC) bidding.
$500
in Ads credit in the first 60 days
Microsoft Advertising
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) contains Microsoft's advertising solutions. Advertising formats include search (Microsoft Search ads), Display and Native ads, Retail Media, and Video and Connected TV (CTV) ads. Services include Performance Max, the company's conversion optimization AI assistant and guide.N/A
Pricing
Google AdsMicrosoft Advertising
Editions & Modules
Offer A
$500
in Ads credit in the first 60 days
Offer B
$1500
in Ads credit in the first 60 days
Offer C
$3000
in Ads credit in the first 60 days
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google AdsMicrosoft Advertising
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google AdsMicrosoft Advertising
Features
Google AdsMicrosoft Advertising
Ad Campaigns
Comparison of Ad Campaigns features of Product A and Product B
Google Ads
3.8
Ratings
5% below category average
Microsoft Advertising
3.9
Ratings
3% below category average
Ad campaign creation2.40 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Ad deployment2.40 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Display advertising9.00 Ratings1.90 Ratings
Ad display and retargeting segmentation8.80 Ratings3.60 Ratings
Sequence targeting1.00 Ratings1.00 Ratings
Contextual advertising2.20 Ratings4.50 Ratings
Social advertising1.00 Ratings1.00 Ratings
Ad Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Ad Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Google Ads
6.3
Ratings
19% above category average
Microsoft Advertising
5.3
Ratings
2% above category average
Ad dashboards2.40 Ratings4.70 Ratings
Ad performance reports9.00 Ratings4.70 Ratings
Ad conversion tracking9.00 Ratings6.30 Ratings
Ad attribution reporting9.00 Ratings5.40 Ratings
Ad forecasting and optimization2.40 Ratings5.40 Ratings
Ad Auctions
Comparison of Ad Auctions features of Product A and Product B
Google Ads
7.0
Ratings
3% above category average
Microsoft Advertising
6.6
Ratings
3% below category average
Ad bidding7.00 Ratings6.60 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google AdsMicrosoft Advertising
Small Businesses
Serpstat
Serpstat
Score 9.0 out of 10
Serpstat
Serpstat
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
WordStream
WordStream
Score 6.9 out of 10
WordStream
WordStream
Score 6.9 out of 10
Enterprises
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 8.6 out of 10
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 8.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google AdsMicrosoft Advertising
Likelihood to Recommend
5.7
(0 ratings)
5.9
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.6
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
1.0
(0 ratings)
6.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
1.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google AdsMicrosoft Advertising
Likelihood to Recommend
Clients who are selling products such as dresses, clothes, jewelry, beauty products, etc., generally work well. Also, in some cases, it doesn't fetch a good ROAS for very small business owners. If a client is already doing well in SEO, the probability for it to perform well over Google Ads is always enhanced, and if it doesn't have a good organic reach, Google Ads also suffers.
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Despite using our account for advertising with every other social media company, Microsoft flagged ours as fraudulent. After dealing with them for weeks, we finally got to a manager, who said that they didn’t know anything, couldn’t provide any information, and was unable to do anything about it. It seems odd, but it would flagger account every time we try to upload the campaigns from Google directly into their ad manager. I would suggest if you try and use their platform, don’t tell them you’re using Google cause they seem to have a thing against it. Once your account is flagged, they have no reasonable way of resolving it, nor they are able to offer any support. You’re better off to just try a different way. Ultimately, just don’t use Microsoft advertising if you can possibly avoid it. Hopefully soon DuckDuckGo will have their own advertising platform and we can eliminate Microsoft given the terrible time we have working with this one of many, social media platforms.
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Pros
  • Keyword Research - Google Ads has a handy built in tool that helps determine important keywords to target both for Ads & SEO
  • Intuitive Analytics Dashboad - Google Ads makes it fairly simple to see and analyze important metrics on how your ads are running week after week
  • Intuitive Setup - Google Ads makes it easy to figure out how to run ads with little to no training (although training is highly recommended to run effective ads), as their interface is clean and easy to figure out (unlike competing products).
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  • Familiar interface, offers editor for bulk changes, adding negative keywords is much easier than in Google Ads
  • Nice reporting tools within the interface, detailed reports can be made fairly easily
  • Had very nice tools to help import/export ads directly from Google Ads, which saves a ton of time
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Cons
  • Google's heavy dependence on AI makes many of the campaign behavior inscrutable and, often, it performs poorly as a result.
  • Their responsive ads, for example, which are heavily recommended by them, often perform significantly worse than normal text ads.
  • Their support, while relatively quick, becomes useless if you need any deep insight/help.
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  • Bing's ad platform could definitely use some improvements - it hasn't been updated in a long time, and it feels very outdated.
  • We feel that the optimization algorithms don't always perform as well for Bing Ads as they do in Google Ads (optimize for conversions, etc.).
  • It would be great to have even more integrations with LinkedIn audience targeting offered - right now, you can just make some bid optimizations in a couple of areas; we'd really like to get more robust options there, and maybe even things like cross-platform tracking.
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Likelihood to Renew
As of today Google AdWords leads approximately 90% of paid searches globally. There is practically is no other network that can offer such a relevant and engaging audience at the price. The PPC model is also unique in that no media dollars are wasted, since PPC models ensure brand interaction versus traditional media which has heavy ad avoidance and clutter but still charges a hefty amount for ads.
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We have had good success with it over all of our clients. We continually recommend bing to reach "the rest of the searchers".
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Usability
This is more of a subjective rating, because I think it can be increased with how much our ad spend is. The more of an ad spend, the more visibility we can get, and therefore all features can climb. With an overall larger presence the usability is that where we can get messages out quick, and that's the main thing we try to do with our campaigns.
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It's very easy to use overall. It has an import from Google Ads to make things simpler. Overall, I would say you can get up and running very quickly. It's similar to other platforms, so if you have used them, it's intuitive.
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Support Rating
We have not yet had an account rep who hasn't tried to bully me or other employees to raise our budgets. At the same time, several years ago, one attempted to help refine our ads and ended up changing the ads to be something we were not affiliated with
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Our Bing Ads reps are very good and attentive. They've offered good recommendations and are quick to resolve unexpected issues and problems. Occasionally they have roped in technical support folks that have been friendly and helpful too. The general helpline for Bing Ads is also very good, especially when compared to Google's customer support.
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Online Training
Daily use with advanced account structures. Familiarity with reporting/api and complex setups.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Google Ads remains at the top advertising channel within our business for both lead volume and revenue generation, whilst maintaining a reasonable cost per lead (CPL). Both Meta Ads and Microsoft Ads have a much lower CPL, those channels don't contribute as much revenue and lead generation.
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Obviously Google is a huge competitor. Typically Google is top of the game for many advertising solutions including search. Microsoft ads has a lower scale and reach compared to Google. However, Microsoft ads audience does not overlap much with Googles, providing incremental reach. Although Microsoft ads lags a bit behind in adapting the new updates that Google comes out with, their customer service is very good and they are likely to go out of their way to adapt their platform to your needs whereas their competitor does not
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Return on Investment
  • Once we got the hang of it and had everything setup, it was a great monthly expense that we could count on ROI from. Either by obtaining new customers or literally staying above our competition in search rankings.
  • We also started consulting on ads for customers and helping them set things up, which created a new revenue stream for us.
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  • We've had a very hard time spending our budgets on Bing which has caused us a lot of extra work on our end. We've essentially had to move that money back to Google or other platforms.
  • It does have an easy import from Google so you're not doubling efforts.
  • The CPCs tend to be less expensive than Google - which is always good for business owners.
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ScreenShots