Create a Microsoft Advertising engine account

Microsoft Advertising allows customers the option to sign in with a work account. Search Ads 360 supports signing in to a Microsoft Advertising account with either a personal Microsoft account or a work account.

 

If you switch from a personal account to a work account, you must reauthorize Search Ads 360 to access your Microsoft Advertising account to avoid functionality issues.

An engine account is the object that connects Search Ads 360 with one of the supported search engines. Each engine account specifies the ID or number of the account that it's connecting to, a date on which Search Ads 360 starts managing the account, and other settings that are specific to the type of engine.

Special permissions required

Only an agency manager or advertiser manager can create an engine account.

How to create a Microsoft Advertising engine account

Here's an overview of how to create a Microsoft Advertising engine account (the details appear later in this article):

1. Link your Microsoft Advertising account to a Microsoft Account.
2. In Search Ads 360:
   1. Create an engine account and authorize Search Ads 360 to access your Microsoft Advertising account.
   2. Verify authorization status.
   3. Run your first sync to import existing campaigns from the engine.

Create and authorize a Microsoft Advertising engine account

1. Navigate to the advertiser that will contain the engine account.

   Steps for navigating to an advertiser

   1. Click the navigation bar to display navigation options.

   2. In the "Agency" list, click on the agency that contains the advertiser. You can search for an agency by name or scroll through the list.

   3. In the "Advertiser" list, click on the advertiser.

   4. Click Apply or press the Enter key.

   Search Ads 360 displays the advertiser page, which contains data for all of the advertiser’s engine accounts.

2. Click the Engine accounts tab.

3. Click New ▼ and select Microsoft Advertising.

   The settings panel for the new engine account appears.

4. Name the account.

   • Choose a name that will allow you to identify the account. Enter up to 100 characters.
   • If you have a naming convention in other systems, using the same convention here would help account matching (for auditing or billing).

5. Optional. Select a date in the Launch date field.

   Choose a date that is meaningful to you such as the date you linked the account. Search Ads 360 doesn't use the date for reporting or syncing.

6. Enter engine settings as described below.

7. Under Engine details, click the Authorize link.

8. Sign in to the Microsoft Account that you linked to your Microsoft Advertising account. Then grant Search Ads 360 permission to access and update information in your Microsoft Advertising account.

9. Click Save.

The new engine account appears in the engine account table and will be available under Account in the account navigation bar.

Microsoft Advertising settings

• Microsoft Advertising account number: To find this value in Microsoft Advertising, click the Home tab. The account ID is in the dropdown.
• Authorization: To manage a Microsoft Advertising account, you'll need to authorize Search Ads 360 to access the Bing Ads API. Click the Authorize link to start the process. Learn more about authorizing a Microsoft Advertising account.

• Sync details: Optionally set up a schedule to sync the account in Search Ads 360.

• URL template: Use an account-level URL template to apply a third-party tracking URL or a common set of URL parameters to landing page URLs for all ads, keywords, and sitelinks in an engine account.

  URL templates are hierarchical. The template you create in an engine account will apply to all campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and sitelinks that don't already define their own template. Learn more about URL templates in Search Ads 360.

  In accounts that use parallel tracking, URL parameters that appear in this field may not be sent to the landing page, depending on how you define them. The recommended practice for these accounts is use the Final URL Suffix to specify URL parameters that your landing pages require.

• Landing page URL details: Select a parameter-handling option for the engine account. This setting determines whether the clickserver URLs that Search Ads 360 generates and traffics to the engine contain only dynamic URL parameters, static parameters, or the entire landing page URL.

  If you switch from the default option (Include dynamic parameters) to any other parameter-handling option, you can't go back to including only dynamic parameters. The option to include dynamic parameters is going away.

Run your first sync

To import existing campaigns from the engine, run your first sync.

When you run the first sync for a Microsoft Advertising account, Search Ads 360 creates additional custom parameters for Search Ads 360 macros and traffics the custom parameters to Microsoft Advertising. Search Ads 360 macros are not available in Microsoft Advertising accounts. Instead, use the custom parameters Search Ads 360 created.

The new custom parameters may place your Microsoft Advertising account under review. 

Do you import Google Ads campaigns into Microsoft Advertising?

If so, before you run the first sync in Search Ads 360, verify that Google Ads URL tracking information wasn't imported into Microsoft Advertising. The Google Ads tracking information could lead to reporting and attribution discrepancies in the Microsoft Advertising account in Search Ads 360.