The ability to import Google Ads campaigns into Microsoft Ads is one of the biggest advantages of the platform.
While I like this feature, and I use it frequently, there are a few “user beware” issues that I want to call out.
What is the Google Import Feature?
There are two different ways to import your Google Ads campaigns into Microsoft Ads.
The first is using the “Import Campaigns” dropdown in the MSA platform.
The second way you can do this is within the Microsoft Bing Ads Editor.
I would recommend using the feature within the user interface, pausing the campaigns and then adjusting specific items via Editor.
Why this process when you could do it all within Editor? Because the interface has checkpoints in place to make sure that errors aren’t missed.
How to Import Google Campaigns Properly
Once you choose “Import from Google Ads”, you’ll sign into your Google account and allow Microsoft to “manage your AdWords campaigns.”
Select your account from the list of Google accounts and then choose the campaigns.
Once you have selected all of that information, carefully review the Import Options. There are a lot, but they’re all very important.
Tracking, Bids, and Budgets
Account-Level URLs
The first section will adjust your account-level URL tracking, although if it includes anything Google-specific, it’s likely best to leave that off and adjust as-needed after you’ve imported the campaigns.
Items Not Previously Imported
It seems that by default, this is checked. If you click “Show advanced options” on the right, you’ll see that it plans to make adjustments to campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords, negative keywords at all levels, negative keyword lists at all levels, keyword landing page URLs, tracking and custom parameters, all targeting, and extensions… So in other words, basically everything.
If these campaigns already exist in MSA and you’re just updating them, this is where you can make a huge mess of everything.
Be very careful with what is checked here to make sure you don’t override anything important.
Updates to Existing Items
This option has the same sections as above.
The one difference is the ability to select “Delete items that have been removed from your Google Ads account.”
Again, be very careful not to override anything important.
Bids and Budgets
This area is where you can make sure your keyword bids are at the Microsoft Advertising minimum.
You can also “update bids and bid strategies”, which is an area I would recommend being careful, especially if you’re testing a bidding strategy in Google that you’re not looking to test in Microsoft.
“Update existing campaign budgets” is sneakily auto-selected, another potential for disaster.
Other Options
This is where you can edit and update landing page URLs, tacking templates, campaign options, ad options and targeting.
None of these seemed to be automatically selected.
A few of the (actually) handy options are:
- The option to find and replace text in URLs, tracking templates and campaign names
- The option to insert text at the end of URLs, tracking templates and campaign names
- The option to include paused ads or campaigns when importing
Two of the most important options are “Pause campaigns when all imported location targets are unsupported” and “Do not expand unsupported location targets.”
These are two options that I haven’t found the Editor import tool to have and they make ALL of the difference.
Since there are differences in Google and Bing in terms of the geographic targeting options, this is really important.
Schedule Imports
This allows you to schedule a future import or just import your data right now.
If you’re making regular adjustments to your campaigns in Google, you can schedule these changes to be imported. (This sounds to me like it could cause a lot of headaches, so I would be careful.)
Once you click “Import” you’ll get an import summary that includes what was and wasn’t updated.
You’ll want to review the changes and make sure everything imported properly.
Conclusion
This is one of my favorite tools to use when creating new campaigns. However, there are some “user beware” details that you should be aware of before importing! I hope that the Editor import feature will be improved in future updates.
Have you used this feature? What do you think of it? We’d love to hear in the comments!
