Should You Use Google Ads or Microsoft Ads?

Most US businesses start with Google Ads. That makes sense. Google processes over 8.5 billion searches per day and holds roughly 83% of the global search market (StatCounter, 2025). It’s where the volume is. But volume isn’t the only thing that matters. Microsoft Ads reaches over 700 million unique users across Bing, Yahoo, AOL, DuckDuckGo, and MSN, and it commands a desktop search share in the US that sits well above its global average. In the US specifically, Bing holds around 10-12% of the desktop search market, and that share skews toward an older, higher-income audience with serious purchasing power.

The real question isn’t which platform is “better.” It’s which one gives your business the best return at your current budget, in your industry, targeting your specific audience. For many US businesses, the answer turns out to be both, but not equally. At Gorilla Marketing, we run Google Ads and Microsoft Ads campaigns side by side for US businesses, and the platform split that works best depends on factors most comparison guides gloss over. This one won’t.

How Do the Two Platforms Compare?

Before getting into the detail, here’s a side-by-side on the metrics that actually drive platform decisions:

Neither column wins outright. The right read depends on who you’re trying to reach and what you’re willing to pay.

The Cost Gap Is Real (and It’s Bigger Than You Think)

The single biggest reason to consider Microsoft Ads: clicks cost less. Sometimes dramatically less.

Industry benchmark data consistently shows Microsoft Ads CPCs running 30-60% below Google Ads for equivalent keywords. In competitive US verticals like legal, insurance, and SaaS, where Google CPCs can exceed $15-50 per click, that gap translates into real money. A B2B software company paying $20 per click on Google might pay $8-12 for the same keyword on Microsoft Ads. At 1,000 clicks a month, that’s $8,000-12,000 in savings.

Lower CPCs don’t automatically mean better ROI. You need to factor in volume. Google delivers far more impressions and clicks for any given keyword. If you’re spending $50,000 a month and need 10,000 clicks to hit your lead targets, Microsoft alone might not have the inventory. But if you’re spending $5,000-15,000 and can work with smaller volumes of higher-quality clicks, the cost advantage is hard to ignore.

There’s a conversion angle too. Microsoft Ads reports an average CPA roughly 20% lower than Google Ads across industries. Part of that is the lower click cost. Part of it is the audience, which we’ll get to next.

Who Actually Uses Bing?

This is where assumptions get challenged. The stereotype is that nobody uses Bing on purpose. The data tells a different story, especially in the US.

Roughly 41% of Bing users in the US earn over $100,000 annually. Over 70% are 35 or older. The 45-54 age bracket shows particularly strong engagement, and that demographic tends to have established careers, stable incomes, and real purchasing authority. Bing users also spend 35% more on average when shopping online compared to Google users (WordStream).

Why does this matter? Because if you’re selling high-consideration products or services, financial products, enterprise software, professional services, luxury goods, or anything where the buyer is a senior decision-maker with budget authority, Microsoft’s audience profile is a better demographic match than Google’s broader, younger-skewing user base.

The US enterprise context amplifies this. Microsoft’s ecosystem penetration in American businesses is enormous: Windows, Office 365, Outlook, Teams, Edge. Millions of corporate machines have Bing set as the default search engine through Edge, and many enterprise IT policies don’t allow employees to change it. A significant chunk of B2B searches during business hours happen on Bing by default, not by choice. Those are exactly the searches you want your ads showing on.

LinkedIn Profile Targeting: Microsoft’s Killer B2B Feature

Microsoft Advertising is the only paid search platform outside of LinkedIn itself that offers LinkedIn Profile Targeting. That’s a genuinely unique capability, and for B2B advertisers, it changes the calculus.

You can layer LinkedIn data onto your search campaigns to target users by company name, industry, or job function. Want to show your enterprise cybersecurity ads only to IT directors at companies with 500+ employees? Google can’t do that through search. Microsoft can.

The performance numbers back it up. Microsoft’s own data shows that campaigns using LinkedIn Profile Targeting see click-through rates increase by 16% and conversion rates jump by 64% compared to campaigns without it. The targeting currently covers 80,000 companies, 148 industries, and 26 job functions, and it expanded to Performance Max campaigns in 2025.

For US B2B companies with long sales cycles and well-defined buyer personas, this feature alone can justify running Microsoft Ads even if you’re already on Google. You’re getting search intent plus professional profile data in a single campaign. LinkedIn’s native ad platform charges a premium for that same audience data. Microsoft lets you access it at search CPCs.

Where Google Ads Still Wins

None of this means Microsoft Ads replaces Google. Google dominates for several clear reasons.

Volume. Google handles roughly 8.5 billion searches daily. If your strategy depends on high-volume keyword targeting, Google is the only platform that delivers at scale. For consumer brands, e-commerce, and any business where sheer reach drives results, Google remains the primary channel.

Mobile. Google owns mobile search. Bing’s strength is desktop, and desktop’s share of total search keeps shrinking. If your customers find you on their phones (and for most consumer businesses, they do), Google captures the majority of those searches.

YouTube and Display. Google Ads gives you access to YouTube (the second-largest search engine by some measures) and a Display Network that reaches over 90% of internet users. Microsoft’s Audience Network is growing, but it doesn’t match Google’s visual advertising reach.

AI and automation. Google’s Smart Bidding, Performance Max, and broad match algorithms have more data to learn from. More auction data means faster optimization at scale. Microsoft has its own automation tools and Copilot integration, but Google’s machine learning benefits from processing the vast majority of global search queries.

Shopping campaigns. For e-commerce, Google Shopping is the dominant product listing ad platform. Microsoft Shopping is worth running, but Google generates the lion’s share of product ad revenue.

Where Microsoft Ads Punches Above Its Weight

Beyond the cost and demographic advantages, Microsoft Ads has structural strengths that matter for specific use cases.

Lower competition. Fewer advertisers on Microsoft means less auction pressure. Your Quality Score equivalent (called Ad Relevance on Microsoft) faces fewer competitors, which means better ad positions at lower bids. For industries where Google auctions are brutally competitive, Microsoft can feel like a pressure release valve.

Campaign import. Microsoft makes it easy to mirror your Google Ads setup. You can import campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and ads directly from Google Ads. That drops the management overhead of running a second platform significantly. You’re not building from scratch. You’re extending what’s already working.

Search partner network. Microsoft powers search for Yahoo, AOL, DuckDuckGo, and Ecosia. DuckDuckGo’s privacy-focused user base has grown steadily, and those users tend to be tech-savvy professionals. Advertising through Microsoft gives you access without a separate campaign.

Outlook and MSN placements. Microsoft’s Audience Network places ads across Outlook.com and MSN, reaching users in contexts where they’re reading email and consuming news. For awareness campaigns, that’s additional inventory Google doesn’t have.

When to Lead with Google Ads

Google should take the larger share of your budget when:

You need maximum reach. A consumer brand launching nationally, an e-commerce store with broad product appeal, or any business where volume of traffic directly correlates with revenue. Google’s audience size is unmatched.

Your audience is mobile-first. Restaurants, local retail, ride-on-demand services, anything where the buying decision happens on a phone. Google captures the overwhelming majority of mobile searches.

You’re running video or display campaigns. If your strategy includes YouTube pre-roll, Discovery ads, or broad Display Network remarketing, Google is the only platform offering that inventory at scale.

You need fast optimization cycles. Google’s algorithms have more data and optimize faster. If you’re testing a new market and need statistical significance quickly, Google’s volume accelerates learning.

When to Lead with Microsoft Ads

Microsoft should take the larger share when:

You’re in B2B and your buyers are senior decision-makers. The combination of desktop-heavy usage during business hours, higher-income demographics, and LinkedIn Profile Targeting makes Microsoft the stronger platform for reaching C-suite and VP-level buyers. Enterprise SaaS, professional services, financial services, consulting: Microsoft’s audience fits these verticals better than Google’s average user.

Your Google CPCs are crushing your margins. If you’re in legal, insurance, finance, or another high-CPC vertical and your cost per acquisition on Google is trending in the wrong direction, Microsoft offers a genuine alternative with lower auction pressure.

You’re targeting an older, higher-income demographic. Wealth management, luxury real estate, retirement planning, high-end home services. Microsoft’s user base over-indexes on the demographic that buys these things.

You want to extend proven campaigns at lower cost. Already running profitable Google Ads campaigns? Import them to Microsoft and pick up incremental conversions at a lower CPC. The marginal ROI on that second platform often exceeds what you’d get from spending the same amount scaling up on Google.

Running Both: How to Split the Budget

For most US businesses with monthly ad budgets above $5,000, running both platforms makes sense. The question is how to split.

A common starting point is 80/20 in favor of Google. That gives Microsoft enough budget to generate meaningful data while keeping the bulk of spend on the higher-volume platform. From there, adjust based on performance.

Watch these metrics closely:

Cost per conversion by platform. If Microsoft delivers leads at $30 and Google delivers them at $55, shift budget toward Microsoft until the marginal cost equalizes.

Lead quality by platform. Cheaper leads aren’t better leads if they don’t close. Track conversion to revenue, not just conversion to form fill.

Impression share. If you’re capturing 95% impression share on Microsoft but only 40% on Google, there’s more room to grow on Google. Conversely, if Microsoft has untapped impression share available, increasing spend there might be more efficient than competing harder on Google.

Some of our most successful campaigns run closer to 60/40 or even 50/50 once the Microsoft Ads data proves out. B2B accounts in particular tend to shift budget toward Microsoft over time.

Don’t treat Microsoft like an afterthought. Running the same campaigns you import from Google without adjusting bids, testing platform-specific ad copy, or reviewing search term reports separately will leave performance on the table. The audiences behave differently. Manage them accordingly.

What About AI and Copilot?

Both platforms are integrating AI rapidly.

Google has leaned into Performance Max, broad match automation, and AI Overviews in search results. These tools benefit from Google’s massive data advantage and generally perform well at scale. But they reduce advertiser control. Performance Max, for instance, gives you limited visibility into which placements and search terms drive results.

Microsoft has integrated Copilot across its advertising platform for AI-assisted campaign creation and performance insights. Its OpenAI partnership and Bing’s ChatGPT-powered features are expanding search use cases. As AI-powered search grows, Microsoft’s early investment here could shift market share in its favor, particularly for complex queries where users prefer conversational results.

The practical takeaway: both platforms will keep automating campaign management. The edge goes to whichever platform’s automation you can feed better data, and whose audience matches your buyer. Google has more data. Microsoft has a more focused, higher-value B2B audience. Neither advantage is going away soon.

Picking the Platform That Earns Your Next Dollar

This isn’t a question with a universal answer. A DTC e-commerce brand selling $30 products to 25-year-olds and an enterprise SaaS company selling $100,000 contracts to CFOs should not be running the same platform mix.

What we can tell you from managing both platforms for US businesses: the companies that get the best results don’t treat Microsoft Ads like Google’s understudy. They run it on its own terms, with its own audience and its own economics. The ones who just import their Google campaigns and forget about them leave money on the table. The ones who optimize for each platform’s strengths consistently outperform single-platform competitors.

If you’re running Google Ads and haven’t tested Microsoft, you’re probably leaving cheaper conversions unclaimed. If you’re spending on Microsoft but haven’t tapped LinkedIn Profile Targeting, you’re missing the platform’s strongest feature. And if you’re trying to figure out the right split for your business, Gorilla Marketing runs both platforms with senior strategists on every account. No long-term contracts. We’ll tell you where your next dollar belongs, even if the honest answer is to keep it where it already is.