The Thesis
Why Microsoft, and why now
The case is not anti-Google. It is pro-intelligence: a measured look at concentration risk, an overlooked ecosystem, and the skills gap that keeps most UK advertisers from capturing it.
Act 1
Concentration risk
Single-platform dependence is a measurable risk, not a philosophy. When almost all of paid search runs through one engine, a pricing change, a policy shift or an algorithm update lands on the whole budget at once.
Performance Max has removed control over placements, creative and measurement, bundling search and display into a single optimisation that finance teams cannot cleanly attribute. When display clicks are mixed in, proving search ROI becomes guesswork.
Borrowed from portfolio management, the logic is familiar to any CFO: you do not hold a single position and call it a strategy.
Act 2
The overlooked ecosystem
Microsoft reaches over a billion users monthly, holds meaningful UK desktop search share, runs at materially lower CPCs, and offers LinkedIn Profile Targeting available nowhere else. Most UK advertisers run no properly optimised Microsoft campaigns. That is a skills gap, not an awareness gap.
Act 3
Platform-native specialism
We exist to close that gap. Not by importing Google campaigns and hoping, but by building for the Microsoft ecosystem from the ground up and measuring what it genuinely adds.
See The Method for how we prove incrementality, and Services for how to start.
A note on the 2025 antitrust remedy
The 2025 US v Google remedy orders Google to syndicate search and text-ad feeds on commercial terms. It is widely read as a narrow ruling and is under appeal. It is a reason to pay attention to search structure, not a switch that opens the market overnight. We treat it as context, not a sales argument.
Why Microsoft FAQ
Is Microsoft Advertising worth it in the UK?
For the right audience, yes. Microsoft holds roughly 14 to 16% of UK desktop search share and reaches a desktop-dominant, higher-income audience, often at materially lower CPCs than Google. The audit tells you whether that fit applies to you.
How large is Microsoft's reach?
Microsoft's ecosystem reaches over a billion users monthly. The point is not raw scale against Google, but a meaningful, distinct audience that most UK advertisers are not properly capturing.
Are Microsoft Ads really cheaper than Google?
Microsoft Ads commonly runs at materially lower CPCs than Google, often cited at around a third lower on average. Lower auction density is a large part of why, though the gap varies by vertical.
What is concentration risk in paid search?
It is the risk of routing almost all of your search spend through one engine, so a pricing, policy or algorithm change lands on the whole budget at once. Adding a properly optimised second engine reduces that single point of failure.
What is LinkedIn Profile Targeting?
It lets you target by job title, company and industry, and it is exclusive to Microsoft Advertising. For B2B, it is one of the strongest reasons to run platform-native campaigns rather than an import.
Who is the Microsoft audience?
It skews desktop-dominant and higher-income; in the US, around 41% of Bing users earn over $100k. That profile is why the platform tends to convert well for B2B, financial services and considered purchases.
Why do most advertisers underuse Microsoft?
It is a skills gap, not an awareness gap. Most UK advertisers know Microsoft exists but run no properly optimised campaigns, because no one on the team specialises in building for the platform.
Does the Google antitrust remedy change things?
The 2025 US v Google remedy orders Google to syndicate search and text-ad feeds on commercial terms. It is widely read as narrow and is under appeal, so we treat it as context for paying attention to search structure, not a switch that opens the market.
Isn't this just an anti-Google argument?
No. We are pro-intelligence, not anti-Google. Google should remain the largest line in most plans. Diversification stops it from being the entire portfolio, which is a risk decision a CFO recognises.
How much budget should move to Microsoft?
There is no universal split. The right answer comes from incrementality: you size the second engine to the lift it genuinely produces and the concentration risk it removes, not to a rule of thumb.
See the revenue you are leaving on the table.
A fixed-fee Microsoft Ads opportunity analysis that quantifies the gap, in your account, on your numbers.