Connect Microsoft Ads to Rig

    Microsoft Advertising, formerly Bing Ads, is usually the channel nobody checks, which is exactly why it drifts. Landing it in the same warehouse and the same shape as your other paid channels means it shows up in blended reporting automatically, instead of needing someone to remember it.

    Requirements
    Admin access to your Microsoft Ads account
    Time required
    2 mins

    Connect it in Rig

    1. In Rig, open Connections and go to Sources & actions.
    2. Search for Microsoft Ads and open the card.
    3. Click Connect with Microsoft Ads. Microsoft asks you to sign in and approve the access.
    4. Approve it. You come back to Rig with the connection live, and nothing to paste.
    5. Click Test, then Sync.

    Sign in as an Admin, not as whoever is already logged in
    Rig syncs every account the authorising user can reach, so the permissions of the person who clicks through the sign-in decide what lands in the warehouse. Authorise with a standard or view-only user and the connection can succeed while quietly returning fewer accounts than you expected, which is worse than failing outright because nothing tells you data is missing. Use an Admin.

    What Rig pulls in

    The account structure, meaning campaigns, ad groups, ads and keywords, plus daily performance reports at account, campaign, ad group, ad, keyword, search term and geographic level.

    The search term report is the one worth knowing about. It records what people actually typed, as opposed to the keywords you bid on, so it is where you find spend going to irrelevant queries and converting queries you are not yet targeting. Having it sync daily is the difference between mining it and exporting it once a quarter when someone remembers.

    Reading the numbers correctly

    • Recent days restate. Conversions attribute after the click, so a day's numbers keep moving for a while after it closes. Rig re-pulls a trailing window on each sync, which is why yesterday's figures change between syncs rather than being frozen at their first value.
    • Every reachable account syncs, across customers. If the authorising user can see several customers, all of them land unless you narrow it. That is usually what an agency wants and occasionally a surprise, so check the account list after the first sync.

    Troubleshooting

    • Fewer accounts than expected, or none: the account you authorised with does not have Admin access. Reconnect and sign in as an Admin.
    • Yesterday's numbers changed since the last sync: expected, not a fault. See the trailing window above.
    • Figures disagree with the Microsoft Ads interface: check you are comparing the same days before treating it as a sync problem. A restating trailing window makes a recent-days comparison look wrong when both sides are correct for the moment they were read.

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