The Microsoft Audience Network, explained for performance marketers

Most performance marketers know Microsoft for search. Fewer have looked closely at the Microsoft Audience Network, which is the platform’s native display and content layer, and that is a gap worth closing. It is not a generic display add-on bolted onto a search product. It is a set of native placements across properties the Microsoft ecosystem owns or partners with, powered by the same intent and profile data that sits behind the search auction.

What MSAN is

The Microsoft Audience Network (MSAN) is Microsoft’s native advertising platform: image and text ads served in-feed and in-content across Microsoft’s own properties and a network of partner publishers. The defining word is native. These are not interruptive banners pasted over a page; they are placements designed to sit within the editorial flow of a feed or article, matched to the look of the surrounding content.

The reason MSAN matters to a performance team is what powers the targeting rather than the format itself. Because it is part of the Microsoft ecosystem, it draws on the same first-party signals that inform search: in-market intent, search and browse behaviour, and profile attributes. That is a different proposition from buying display through a network that only sees a slice of behaviour. You are reaching people the platform understands from their search and productivity activity, in a native context, rather than chasing cookies across the open web.

It helps to set scale in context. Microsoft’s ecosystem reaches over 1 billion users monthly, with Bing passing 1bn monthly active users in 2026. MSAN is the mechanism for reaching a slice of that audience outside the moment of active search, while still carrying intent signals through into the targeting. That combination, scale plus genuine intent data in a native format, is what distinguishes it from a generic display buy.

Placements and inventory

The inventory is anchored by Microsoft’s owned-and-operated properties, which is where the quality and the data advantage are strongest. Ads appear natively across Outlook.com, MSN, the Microsoft Start feed and the Microsoft Edge browser’s new-tab and content surfaces, alongside a network of vetted partner publishers that extends reach beyond the owned properties.

The owned-and-operated piece is the part to understand first, because it is what makes MSAN different from open-web display. These are high-traffic, logged-in or productivity contexts: email, news, the browser surface itself. They tend to skew towards considered, desktop-led usage, which aligns with the platform’s wider audience profile. A meaningful share of Microsoft’s audience is higher-income and desktop-dominant; in the US around 41% of Bing users earn over $100k. The placements sit in environments where that profile is concentrated, which is part of why MSAN inventory behaves differently from a broad display network.

Two characteristics are worth holding in mind for planning. First, native formats fit the surrounding content, so creative that is built for the context tends to outperform creative ported wholesale from a display campaign. Second, the partner network extends reach but is more variable in context than the owned properties, so it benefits from the same placement controls and exclusions you would apply to any content buy. Treated as a quality-led native channel rather than a volume-led display dump, the inventory rewards the attention.

Targeting signals

Targeting is where MSAN earns its place in a performance plan, because the signals available are not generic display segments. They are drawn from how people actually search, browse and work inside the Microsoft ecosystem.

In-market and intent audiences are built from search and browse behaviour, which means you can reach people who have shown commercial interest in a category even when they are not actively searching at that moment. This is the bridge between search and display: the same intent that drives the search auction can be carried into native placements, so you are not starting cold. Remarketing and customer-match style audiences let you re-engage known users and your own lists across the native surfaces. Demographic and profile signals layer on top, and the platform’s higher-income, desktop-dominant skew makes these more useful for considered-purchase categories than the equivalents on a broad network.

The signal that has no equivalent elsewhere is the professional one. LinkedIn Profile Targeting, by job title, company and industry, is exclusive to Microsoft Advertising and is available to layer onto Audience Network campaigns. For B2B advertisers, that turns MSAN from a generic native channel into something genuinely differentiated: native placements, in quality contexts, addressable by the professional attributes that actually define the buying audience. That is a platform-native capability you cannot replicate by buying display elsewhere, and it is the single strongest reason for a B2B team to look at the network seriously.

Where it fits the funnel

MSAN is not a search replacement and should not be planned as one. Search captures existing demand at the moment of intent; the Audience Network’s job is to work the parts of the funnel that sit around that moment, which is a different and complementary role.

At the upper and middle funnel, MSAN reaches in-market audiences before they actively search, using intent signals to find people who are likely to convert later rather than spraying impressions at a broad demographic. This is where the intent data does its most distinctive work: it is prospecting with a commercial signal attached, not awareness for its own sake. Lower down, remarketing across the native surfaces keeps a brand present with people who have already engaged, in the email, news and browser contexts where the audience spends time outside of search.

The discipline that makes it work is measurement, because native placements add genuine incrementality only if you can separate the conversions they cause from the demand search would have captured regardless. So the network should be judged on what it adds to the blended outcome, not on last-click volume, which will always flatter the search line. Planned this way, as an intent-led native layer that extends a controlled search programme into the spaces around active search, MSAN stops being a mysterious display tickbox and becomes a deliberate part of how the Microsoft ecosystem captures and nurtures demand. For most performance teams it is underused precisely because it is misunderstood, and understanding it is most of the advantage. If you want to map it onto your own funnel, that is where to start.