Microsoft ads Traffic Quality Issue

[anmol_s]

Recently I've seen the traffic quality on Microsoft ads has gone down significantly.

Some of campaigns show up as really weird user behavior in Hotjar. Like 90% of the users(bots) clicking on the disclaimer link on the bottom of the landing page.

The publisher reports show that the traffic is 'Search' coming from 'Microsoft select sites'. The referrer domain is Bing.com in my tracker.


Any tips on how to exclude/optimize this traffic?

 

[joeybabbs]

I have recently experienced the same issue and it REALLY sucks! What I have started doing on Bing is only focussing on one keyword now and blocking a ton of crap - its getting to point where I am wasting a lot of time there, and thinking I might take a break till they fix their shit.

I know its probably not the answer you wanted - but this just started happening last week for me so maybe its a bug they will fix soon. Could also be due to Q4.

 

[cory_schop]

Here is a strategy I used to successfully revive 2 Microsoft Ads accounts after I too was experiencing a lot of junk after Microsoft added in the Audience Network traffic as well took away the ability to get traffic on only Bing.com and Yahoo.com

1) Extensive url negative placement list to weed out the audience ads traffic. I think Joey already put out a video on this, so check that.
2) Cleaning up and weeding out the poor quality traffic that is now wrapped up in Microsofts "Quality Search partner" traffic.

Run a gender Report and look at your performance of Unknown Gender vs Male and Female. If Unknown performs so much worse in terms of conversion and CPA, try this.

Do a bid adjustment of a very high amount. I am using 900% for Male and Female. Then adjust your starting bid to something very low. The idea here is that traffic with Unknown gender is NOT coming from Microsoft Search owned properties like Bing.com and Yahoo.com and with such a low starting keyword bid we can avoid clicks from the "Quality Search partner" that we think is serving this Unknown traffic.

 

[joeybabbs]

Here is a strategy I used to successfully revive 2 Microsoft Ads accounts after I too was experiencing a lot of junk after Microsoft added in the Audience Network traffic as well took away the ability to get traffic on only Bing.com and Yahoo.com

1) Extensive url negative placement list to weed out the audience ads traffic. I think Joey already put out a video on this, so check that.
2) Cleaning up and weeding out the poor quality traffic that is now wrapped up in Microsofts "Quality Search partner" traffic.

Run a gender Report and look at your performance of Unknown Gender vs Male and Female. If Unknown performs so much worse in terms of conversion and CPA, try this.

Do a bid adjustment of a very high amount. I am using 900% for Male and Female. Then adjust your starting bid to something very low. The idea here is that traffic with Unknown gender is NOT coming from Microsoft Search owned properties like Bing.com and Yahoo.com and with such a low starting keyword bid we can avoid clicks from the "Quality Search partner" that we think is serving this Unknown traffic.

I like it....

Did you notice it made a difference? Are you still running Bing?

 

[cory_schop]

I like it....

Did you notice it made a difference? Are you still running Bing?

Made a HUGE difference. It saved 2 accounts. I think it might depend on the niche as I told a friend about it and it didn't work for him, but worth a try. Let me know how it goes for you!

 

[rdcclu]

Even though you set the gender to +900%, doesn't setting the bid really low actually encourage clicks from the Audience Network and exclude clicks that could have come from Bing and Yahoo if the bid was higher and more competitive?

 

[cory_schop]

Even though you set the gender to +900%, doesn't setting the bid really low actually encourage clicks from the Audience Network and exclude clicks that could have come from Bing and Yahoo if the bid was higher and more competitive?

That hasn't been my experience because the 900% is still in place, so it's like bidding your normal click price but weeding out the Unknowns. Test it.

 

[cory_schop]

Even though you set the gender to +900%, doesn't setting the bid really low actually encourage clicks from the Audience Network and exclude clicks that could have come from Bing and Yahoo if the bid was higher and more competitive?

You still need to have an extensive placement block list in place.