Bing Ads conversion tracking allows advertisers to record what customers do on their website and evaluate the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. If you are running campaigns in Bing Ads, there are changes being made to how conversions are tracked in the interface.
Bing Ads Conversion Tracking Changes:
1. Conversions will now be reported based on the time of the ad click that led to the conversion.
2. Assists will now be reported based on the time of the ad click that contributed to a conversion.
Previously, conversions were recorded at the time the conversion occurred, but now they will be recorded at the time of the ad click. This will help advertisers know when the traffic from their ads is the most valuable.
This will also improve the performance of ad schedule bid modifiers, as they align better to the time of the click, instead of the conversion. If you’re using auto-bidding, no actions are required because the algorithm optimizes using the historical data.
How Will This Change Impact Reporting?
Let’s walk through an example to illustrate how this change will show up across our reporting.
- Day 1: A user clicks on your ad (keyword 1) and browses through your website to see if you have a product they want.
- Day 2: The same user clicks on another one of your ads (keyword 2) and, while on your website, adds a product to their cart.
- Day 3: The user goes to your website and completes the purchase of the product in their shopping cart.
Both the conversion event and assist event will be reported to you at the time of the related ad click, making it easier for you to understand the customer journey and related conversion metrics.
| Before this change | Click | Conversion | Assist |
| Day 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Day 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Day 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| After this change | Click | Conversion | Assist |
| Day 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Day 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Day 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Bing Ads will continue to use a last-click attribution model for conversion tracking. That remains unchanged with this update.
Websites where conversions typically happen close to the click event may not see much change in their reporting. Websites with longer conversion windows from the click event may see some fluctuations in their reporting for a short time as the new reporting data stabilizes. This will not affect any conversion activity on your website, just the reporting data to Bing Ads.
We’d love to hear your thoughts about this change in the comments below!
