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Suppose you promote your website using Microsoft Ads (formerly Bing Ads), as well as other advertising platforms. In that case, you can easily and conveniently analyze and compare the performance of those campaigns in Google Analytics 4.
When you bring in data from different ad platforms, like Microsoft Ads or Google Ads, you get a clearer view of how your campaigns are performing. Keeping an eye on your Bing Ads data inside Google Analytics helps you spot what’s working and fine-tune your strategy as you go.
Tracking Microsoft Ads in Google Analytics 4 is an easy and convenient way to evaluate the performance of your Microsoft Ads campaigns, access granular data for advertising campaigns, analyze and compare with other advertising platforms, optimize cross-channel budget allocation, and pinpoint marketing opportunities.
In this article, updated in 2025, we’ll explain how to get your data from Bing Ads loaded into Google Analytics 4 and how to automate your marketing reporting. Proper setup and integration improve access to event and conversion data from each advertising service.
Bringing Microsoft Ads data into Google Analytics 4 opens up valuable insights for your marketing efforts.
Tracking your Microsoft Ads data in GA4 helps you make smarter decisions and get the most out of your ad budget.
Before analyzing Microsoft Ads performance in GA4, several tracking and setup essentials must be in place, including the ability to generate custom reports.
To view data from Microsoft Ads (formerly Bing Ads) campaigns in GA4 reports, you must add UTM tags to your ad links and configure cost data import. You can import Bing Ads data into Google Analytics 4 to analyze cost and performance metrics.
To bring Bing Ads data into GA4, start by exporting your cost data from Microsoft Ads and importing it into Google Analytics 4 with the correct mapping. This ensures your performance insights are accurate. Just ensure that your ad URLs include UTM parameters; this step is crucial for accurately tracking Microsoft Ads traffic in GA4.
After setup, you can create a custom report like this:
Track the number of users, conversions, transactions, and total revenue from Microsoft Ads campaigns, and compare this data with traffic data from other sources, such as Twitter Ads. You can also segment or filter the report by campaign name to gain deeper insights into which campaigns are performing best.
Report: Reports → Life cycle → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition
Analyze the effectiveness of different advertising channels by comparing clicks, impressions, costs, CPC, and ROAS. Using Google Analytics 4, you can analyze engagement metrics to optimize your Microsoft Ads campaigns. Including the campaign ID in your imported data ensures accurate mapping and reporting of cost metrics in Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Proper tracking in Microsoft Ads enables the identification of low-performing keywords in Google Analytics 4.
Report: Reports → Life cycle → Acquisition → Non-Google cost. After the initial import of Bing Ads cost data, a non-Google cost report will appear in GA4 for analysis.
See how many conversions Microsoft Ads brought to your website, tracking important user actions.
Reviewing goal details in your advertising platform ensures that conversions are tracked and attributed correctly in Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
Report: Advertising → Performance → All channels
In the attribution report, you can view the conversion paths and assess the effectiveness of Microsoft Ads throughout the entire user journey. Analyzing the sequence of pages visited helps identify which landing pages or thank-you pages contribute most to conversions from Microsoft Ads, providing insights into user interactions.
Google Analytics 4 offers advanced features, such as predictive analytics, to help understand audience behavior from Microsoft Ads campaigns.
Report: Advertising → Attribution→ Conversion paths
You can also create your own custom reports using the metrics, filters, and segments you need to evaluate the overall performance of your advertising or marketing, for example, to compare ROAS across all paid campaigns. You can further customize these reports based on the track type used in your Microsoft Ads UET tag setup, such as 'Page view' or 'Event'.
A basic setup involves deploying a single Microsoft UET tag across all pages to start tracking conversions, such as signups or redirects, without complex event configurations.
UTM tags are code snippets appended to ad campaign links, containing information about the traffic source, ad campaign, ad keywords, and other relevant details. When a person follows a link to your website that contains UTM tags, your web analytics system can track all this information.
In Microsoft Ads, UTM parameters are referred to as the final URL suffix, a feature that enables you to track specific information about your ad’s performance.
By adding a URL parameter field to the end of your landing page URL, you can include variables such as keywords, match types, and ad IDs. You can get the UTM builder that works great for GA4 below:
However, manually creating UTM codes for each ad campaign via the Campaign URL Builder tool may not be the best direction to follow.
If you’re looking to win your marketing game, you need robust tracking with dynamic URL parameters that can provide you with even more detailed information in Google Analytics 4. Additionally, you can generate hardcoded values on the ad level, which saves time and streamlines the tagging process.
The great thing about the final URL suffix is that it can be added at various levels, including the account, campaign, ad group, ad, and keyword levels. However, to get the most out of this feature, it’s best to leverage Microsoft Ads’ dynamic URL parameters and set the final URL parameters at the account level.
To do this, go to your Microsoft Ads account, click on settings in the left bar, and select Account Level Options. Creating a UET tag requires logging into Microsoft Ads, navigating to Tools, and selecting UET tags.
Next, locate the Auto-tagging of UTM section below and check the box next to 'Add UTM tags to my destination URLs' to enable the automated configuration of the landing page URLs. For accurate tracking, configure the following settings: enable dynamic parameters, turn on auto-tagging, and set up the final URL suffix with the required variables.
If you’ve already manually added tags to your campaigns, select 'Keep my existing tags' and add any missing ones. Microsoft Ads (Bing Ads) will retain the existing codes and simply add the missing ones.
If you haven’t created UTM tags yet or want to replace your existing tags with automatically generated ones, select the 'Replace all existing tags' option. You can also track events as conversions by sending data through Google Tag Manager to Microsoft Ads.
Additionally, enable auto-tagging of your campaigns with Click ID (MSCLKID) to facilitate conversion tracking, allowing the ad platform to learn from your conversions and optimize ads for improved performance. To set up conversion tracking in Microsoft Ads, you should install the Microsoft UET tag using Google Tag Manager.
As the final step, click "Save" to ensure your configuration is stored.
Additionally, you can fill in the Final URL suffix with the parameters you want to use, or leave it blank if you prefer Bing Ads to configure UTM tags by default.
After that, the Microsoft Ads system will automatically add the following UTM tags to all target URLs in your ad campaigns:
For example, a link for a paid campaign in Microsoft Ads might look like this:
http://www.site.com/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=discount&utm_content=accessories&utm_term=smart_watch
Now that we have the necessary values, let’s construct a final URL parameter that will provide detailed insights to effectively track Microsoft / Bing Ads in Google Analytics 4.
Unfortunately, as of today, you won't be able to measure results at the ad group or keyword level in Google Analytics 4 due to platform limitations. However, using UTM parameters in your Bing Ads allows you to track detailed keyword performance in Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
You should test your Microsoft Ads setup using Google Tag Manager's preview mode to ensure proper tracking and verification. With GTM, you can create a new tag that fires whenever users complete specific actions, enabling accurate conversion tracking across both Microsoft Ads and GA4.
If you are tired of manual reporting and need to generate ROAS & CPO reports with keyword-level granularity, stay on top of your ad performance with OWOX BI.
Note: If your site doesn’t support autodistribution, you’ll need to add UTM tags manually. You can learn more about how to do this in the Google Analytics 4 help section.
Just imagine, with the power of UTM tags, you’d have insider knowledge on which campaigns are effectively driving users to your site! Isn’t that a game-changer?
However, it won’t display the advertising return for Bing/Microsoft Ads – for that, you’ll need cost data that is available in your Microsoft Ads Account.
This data can be uploaded to Google Analytics 4 in several ways. To facilitate the import of Microsoft Ads cost data, you will need to create a new data source in Google Analytics 4 (GA4). In this article, we’ll examine two approaches, beginning with the simplest and most convenient.
Let’s start with the manual way of importing cost data into Google Analytics 4. Manual import of Bing Ads cost data requires preparing a CSV file and uploading it to Google Analytics 4.
You can prepare a CSV file with your Microsoft Ads cost data and manually upload it to Google Analytics 4. You’ll need to repeat this procedure each time you require fresh reports (e.g., daily, weekly), and you must follow the same process for all other non-Google advertising platforms you use to drive traffic to the website.
In the Reports tab, go to Default Reports and select the Campaign report name and Performance report type.
First, modify the list of columns by adding the Date field to split the data by day.
Then specify the reporting period,
Finally, schedule the delivery frequency by setting up:
After that, click the Download button to download the CSV file with the data you've selected.
Open it, add the missing ga: source and ga: medium columns, and fill them with the values bing and cpc, respectively. Rename the rest of the columns in the file so they match the Google Analytics datasheet:
You’ll also need to edit the date format. Bing Ads reports use the dd/mm/yyyy format.
NOTE: The date must be changed to yyyymmdd format to be accessible by GA4
As a result, you’ll get something like this table:
Save the table in CSV format to upload it to Google Analytics 4 dataset.
Open the admin panel in your Google Analytics account (GA4), select Import data in the resource settings, and click the Create button:
Give a name to the dataset – for example, “Microsoft Ads cost data” – and select Cost data:
Choose the import source. In this case it will be Manual CSV upload and upload CSV file and click Next:
Now you need to decide on the schema for the loaded data. By default, there are five required parameters: date, source, medium, campaign, and campaignId. These fields help GA4 link your cost data to the right traffic source and campaign. Both manual and automated methods for importing cost data require that the data be in a specific format to be compatible with GA4. For automatic imports, you can set up an SFTP integration to upload Bing Ads data into Google Analytics 4.
You’ll also need to include required metrics, such as cost, clicks, and impressions. For deeper insights, you can add optional fields such as keyword, ad group, or ad content.
Next, map the columns from your CSV file to the corresponding fields in Google Analytics. Once done, click Import. If your dataset or data source is restricted, you may need to grant access permissions to allow GA4 to retrieve the imported data.
If everything matches correctly, you’ll see a success message. If not, GA4 will identify any errors, allowing you to correct them and re-upload. You should verify the mapping in GA4 if the Bing Ads cost data is not showing up in your reports.
If all the fields are filled in correctly, you’ll see a message saying that the upload was successful.
Otherwise, Google Analytics 4 will report an error and show what needs to be fixed. Your data will appear in GA4 reports within 24 hours.
It seems too complicated to repeat this process manually over and over again. However, you still want to measure Bing ad performance and compare it with other traffic sources in the Google Analytics 4 interface?
Hack, yes, let’s automate this whole process just once and get the fresh data uploaded to GA4 for daily reporting. You can import Bing Ads cost data into Google Analytics 4 manually or automatically.
Manually uploading CSVs every week can quickly become a chore. Instead, you can automate the entire process using one of three reliable methods, each suited to different tool preferences and team setups.
For teams working in BigQuery, this method offers a powerful and automated way to bring Microsoft Ads cost data into GA4. Begin by using the free OWOX Microsoft Ads to BigQuery Connector, which continuously syncs campaign performance data, such as cost, impressions, and clicks, into a BigQuery table.
Once your raw data is in place, apply OWOX BI Data Transformation to shape it into the structure GA4 requires. With OWOX’s no-code interface, you can also rename columns, filter values, group by date or campaign, and handle missing fields, all without writing SQL. These transformations can be tested, previewed, and scheduled to run automatically, ensuring your data is always ready for reporting.
After the data is transformed, use the native GA4 BigQuery import feature to bring it into your GA4 property. This approach ensures daily reporting accuracy without repetitive manual steps, giving you full control over data structure and business logic.
If you don’t use BigQuery, you can still automate Microsoft Ads cost data imports into GA4 using just Google Sheets. Start by using the free OWOX Microsoft Ads to Google Sheets Connector, which pulls your campaign data, such as cost, clicks, impressions, and campaign metadata, directly into a spreadsheet on a schedule you set.
Once the raw data is in Sheets, apply simple Google Sheets formulas to convert it into the structure required by Google Analytics 4. This includes renaming columns (e.g., date, source, medium, campaign_id, cost) and adjusting formats, such as dates, to the standard format of yyyymmdd. You can use built-in formulas, such as ARRAYFORMULA, TEXT, and IF, to reshape the data as needed.
Once your data is ready, you can use GA4’s built-in Google Sheets import feature to upload cost data directly. It’s a great option for marketers or small teams who prefer working in spreadsheets without dealing with the complexity of BigQuery or cloud setups.
This method is ideal if you use BigQuery but prefer working with reporting data in Google Sheets. Start by connecting Microsoft Ads to BigQuery using the free OWOX Microsoft Ads to BigQuery Connector. This connector automatically loads your ad spend, clicks, impressions, and campaign details into BigQuery.
Next, use OWOX Data Marts to create a custom Google Sheets report from that BigQuery data. OWOX Data Marts enable you to define the logic, format, and schedule for your cost data using a visual interface, ensuring the structure aligns with GA4 import requirements. The data can be filtered, transformed, and enriched using custom SQL, and delivered to Sheets on a schedule.
Once the formatted data appears in Google Sheets, simply use GA4’s native import feature from Google Sheets. This hybrid method is perfect for teams who want the scalability of BigQuery with the flexibility and familiarity of Google Sheets for reporting.
Here’s a quick comparison of the three automated methods you can use to import Microsoft Ads (Bing Ads) cost data:
Manual reporting might work when you’re running just a few Microsoft Ads campaigns, but as your ad spend grows, so does the need for accurate, scalable analytics.
Google Analytics 4 helps unify performance tracking across channels, but it can’t show ROAS or cost metrics from Microsoft Ads unless you upload or automate the data.
With OWOX Data Marts (Community Apps Script Edition), you can automatically bring Microsoft Ads cost and performance data into BigQuery or Google Sheets, eliminating the need for coding and repetitive exports.
Once set up, you gain clean, structured data and import it to your GA4 account, you’ll be getting ongoing insights, historical trend analysis, and informed budget decisions – all within your existing analytics stack.
