How to Optimize Bing Shopping Campaigns: A Complete Guide
- November 21, 2025
- 5:02 pm
Optimizing Bing Shopping campaigns is essential for any e-commerce business looking to maximize ROI from Microsoft Advertising. If you want professional assistance to set up and optimize your campaigns effectively, check out our Bing Ads Management Services for expert guidance.
Unlike standard text ads, Bing Shopping campaigns allow advertisers to showcase product images, prices, and promotions directly to users searching for relevant items. This makes them highly visual and intent-driven, offering the potential for higher conversion rates—but only if optimized correctly.
In this guide, we’ll explore proven strategies to optimize Bing Shopping campaigns, from account setup and feed management to bidding strategies, audience targeting, and ongoing performance improvement.
Understanding Bing Shopping Campaigns
Before diving into optimization techniques, it’s important to understand what Bing Shopping campaigns are and how they differ from traditional PPC campaigns.
Bing Shopping campaigns use product ads powered by your product feed, which is uploaded through the Microsoft Merchant Center. These campaigns display product images, pricing, store name, and promotional details directly in search results. Unlike search ads, you don’t bid on keywords directly. Instead, Bing uses product attributes from your feed (like title, description, category) to match user queries. This means feed quality and structure play a huge role in campaign performance.
Key benefits of Bing Shopping campaigns include:
High visual engagement: Product images make your ads stand out, increasing click-through rates (CTR).
Purchase intent targeting: Ads appear for users actively searching for products like yours.
Cross-platform reach: Bing Shopping campaigns run on Microsoft Search Network, including Bing, Yahoo, and AOL.
Because Bing Shopping campaigns are highly data-driven, optimization is not just about bids—it’s about ensuring your feed, structure, and targeting align with both your products and audience.
Step 1: Optimize Your Product Feed
Your product feed is the foundation of any successful Bing Shopping campaign. A poorly structured feed will result in low impressions, poor targeting, and wasted ad spend. Here’s how to optimize your feed effectively:
1.1 Ensure Accurate and Complete Product Data
Every product in your feed should include:
Title: Include relevant keywords naturally; avoid keyword stuffing.
Description: Provide clear, concise details highlighting benefits, features, and unique selling points.
Category: Map products to Bing’s taxonomy for proper indexing.
Price & Availability: Keep these up-to-date; inaccurate pricing can lead to disapprovals.
Image: Use high-resolution, professional images that clearly display the product.
1.2 Use High-Quality Keywords in Product Titles
Although Bing Shopping campaigns don’t allow direct keyword bidding, your product titles act as the primary match signal. Use relevant search terms naturally:
Example: Instead of “Shoes,” use “Men’s Running Shoes – Lightweight, Breathable Sneakers.”
This increases the likelihood that your ad will appear for relevant searches, improving CTR and conversion rates.
1.3 Leverage Custom Labels
Custom labels allow you to segment products based on performance, seasonality, or profit margin. For example:
High-margin items
Best-sellers
Seasonal promotions
You can then adjust bids or target campaigns based on these labels, improving ROI.
1.4 Regular Feed Updates
Bing Shopping campaigns rely heavily on accurate, up-to-date feeds. Ensure your feed reflects inventory changes, promotions, and new product launches. Frequent updates prevent disapprovals and missed opportunities.
Step 2: Structure Your Campaigns Strategically
Proper campaign structure is crucial for optimization. A well-organized campaign allows better bidding control, budget allocation, and performance tracking.
2.1 Use Product Groups
Within a Bing Shopping campaign, products are grouped based on attributes like category, brand, or custom labels. Consider splitting your campaigns into:
Top-selling products: Focus higher budgets here.
Seasonal items: Increase bids during peak seasons.
Low-margin or experimental products: Allocate smaller budgets.
This segmentation allows more granular bidding and reporting, giving you insights into which products drive profit.
2.2 Separate Campaigns by Goal
Not all products or promotions serve the same purpose. Separate campaigns can include:
Revenue-focused campaigns: Maximize sales on high-margin products.
Traffic-focused campaigns: Boost visibility for new products or categories.
Brand campaigns: Ensure your brand appears prominently when users search specifically for your store.
Segmentation prevents budget cannibalization and ensures your spend aligns with business goals.
Step 3: Optimize Bidding Strategies
Bing Shopping campaigns offer several bidding options, each suited to different goals.
3.1 Manual CPC Bidding
Manual CPC allows full control over bids at the product or product group level. Benefits include:
Greater control over high-performing products
Ability to adjust bids based on ROI and margins
Drawback: Manual bidding requires continuous monitoring and adjustment, especially if you have a large inventory.
3.2 Enhanced CPC & Automated Bidding
Microsoft offers automated bidding strategies that optimize bids in real-time to maximize conversions or clicks. Options include:
Maximize Clicks: Automatically sets bids to get the most clicks within your budget.
Maximize Conversions: Focuses on achieving the highest number of conversions.
Target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): Adjusts bids to achieve a specific revenue-to-spend ratio.
Automated bidding is particularly useful for large inventories, where manual optimization is time-consuming.
3.3 Adjust Bids Based on Performance
Use Bing’s reporting features to adjust bids based on:
Device type (desktop vs mobile)
Location performance
Dayparting (time of day performance)
Product group performance
For example, if a product converts best on mobile, increasing mobile bid adjustments can boost overall revenue without raising total spend.
Step 4: Leverage Negative Keywords and Query Reports
Although Bing Shopping campaigns rely on feed attributes, irrelevant searches can still trigger your ads, wasting budget.
4.1 Implement Negative Keywords
Add negative keywords to prevent your ads from showing for irrelevant searches. For instance, if you sell premium shoes, you may want to add:
“cheap”
“free”
“DIY”
This ensures your budget focuses on users most likely to convert.
4.2 Analyze Search Query Reports
Bing provides search query reports showing exactly which searches triggered your ads. Regularly review this data to:
Identify new negative keywords
Spot high-converting search terms that can guide product title optimization
Discover new opportunities for campaign segmentation
Step 5: Improve Ad Visibility and CTR
Optimizing your feed and bids is only part of the equation. CTR is critical for both cost efficiency and conversion potential.
5.1 Optimize Product Images
High-quality images with multiple angles or lifestyle shots increase engagement. Avoid stock images that fail to differentiate your product.
5.2 Use Promotions and Sale Prices
Including promotional text like “20% Off” or “Free Shipping” in your feed can make your ad more appealing and increase CTR.
5.3 Product Ratings
Bing Shopping supports product ratings in ads. If you have positive reviews, enable them in your feed to build trust and boost clicks.
Step 6: Leverage Audience Targeting
Audience targeting allows you to focus your budget on users who are most likely to convert, improving ROAS and reducing wasted spend. Bing offers several audience targeting options that integrate seamlessly with Shopping campaigns.
6.1 Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA)
RLSA allows you to target users who have previously visited your website or interacted with your products. By adding these users to your campaigns, you can:
Increase bids for high-intent audiences
Tailor messaging to returning visitors
Boost conversions for users already familiar with your brand
For example, if a user viewed a specific product but didn’t purchase, you can increase the bid on that product’s ad group when they search again.
6.2 In-Market Audiences
Bing allows you to target users actively searching for products similar to yours. Segmenting your campaigns for in-market audiences ensures your ads reach users at the bottom of the funnel, increasing purchase probability.
6.3 Custom Audiences
Custom Audiences allow you to create segments based on:
Email lists
Website visitors with specific behaviors
Engagement with previous campaigns
This level of targeting ensures your ads reach high-value prospects instead of broad audiences, improving both CTR and ROI.
Step 7: Utilize Remarketing and Dynamic Remarketing
Remarketing is a key component of Bing Shopping optimization. Users often browse multiple products before purchasing, and remarketing campaigns capture this latent demand.
7.1 Standard Remarketing
Target users who visited your website but didn’t convert. Tailor bids or create special campaigns that emphasize promotions or urgency.
7.2 Dynamic Remarketing
Dynamic remarketing automatically shows users ads featuring products they previously viewed on your website. Combined with optimized product feeds, dynamic remarketing is highly effective for:
Cart abandoners
Repeat customers
Seasonal upsells
Dynamic remarketing in Bing Shopping is similar to Google’s approach, leveraging feed data and user behavior to increase conversions without manually creating individual ads for each product.
Step 8: Track Performance with Advanced Reporting
Optimization requires careful measurement. Bing provides several reporting tools to track campaign success and identify areas for improvement.
8.1 Key Metrics to Monitor
CTR (Click-Through Rate): Indicates how relevant your ad is to searchers. Low CTR may signal poor feed titles or images.
Conversion Rate: Measures the effectiveness of your campaign in turning clicks into purchases.
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): The ultimate measure of profitability.
Impression Share: Shows the percentage of eligible impressions your ads are receiving. Low share may indicate under-bidding.
8.2 Segment Reports
Bing allows segmentation by device, location, and time of day. Use this data to optimize bids and budget allocation. For instance, if mobile users have higher conversion rates, increase mobile bids while lowering desktop bids if underperforming.
8.3 Search Query Insights
Regularly analyze search queries that triggered your ads. Use this to:
Add new relevant products to your campaigns
Identify underperforming queries to add as negative keywords
Optimize feed titles based on high-performing searches
Step 9: Seasonal and Promotional Optimization
Timing is everything in e-commerce. Optimizing your campaigns for seasonal trends and promotions can dramatically improve performance.
9.1 Seasonal Campaigns
Create dedicated campaigns for holidays, back-to-school, Black Friday, or other high-traffic periods. Increase bids for best-selling products and allocate higher budgets during peak times.
9.2 Promotions and Special Offers
Include sale prices, discounts, or free shipping in your product feed during promotions. Bing Shopping campaigns highlight these offers directly in search results, increasing CTR and conversion likelihood.
9.3 Early Planning
Start building seasonal campaigns weeks in advance. This ensures:
Adequate budget allocation
Time to test product feeds and bids
Sufficient performance data to optimize before peak shopping days
Step 10: Optimize for Mobile Users
With mobile search accounting for a significant portion of e-commerce traffic, optimizing Bing Shopping campaigns for mobile is critical.
Responsive images: Ensure product images look clear on small screens.
Mobile-friendly landing pages: Fast-loading pages improve conversion rates.
Device bid adjustments: Increase bids for devices that convert better.
Monitoring mobile performance separately from desktop allows precise optimization for user behavior across devices.
Step 11: Experiment with Advanced Bid Strategies
Beyond standard bidding, advanced strategies help maximize efficiency and revenue.
11.1 Portfolio Bidding
Combine multiple campaigns into a portfolio to manage bids collectively. Portfolio bidding allows automated adjustments across campaigns, optimizing for conversions, clicks, or ROAS on a broader scale.
11.2 Bid Modifiers
Adjust bids for:
Device type
Location
Time of day
Example: Increase bids for users in high-income ZIP codes or during peak shopping hours to maximize revenue from high-intent traffic.
11.3 Test and Refine
A/B test bidding strategies regularly. Compare manual CPC vs automated bidding on similar product groups, analyze performance, and adjust accordingly. Continuous testing is key to long-term success.
Step 12: Scaling Bing Shopping Campaigns
Once campaigns are optimized and performing well, scaling is the next step. Scaling should focus on increasing volume without sacrificing efficiency.
12.1 Expand Product Coverage
Add new products or variants to the feed.
Test related product categories.
Use insights from search query reports to identify opportunities.
12.2 Increase Budget Strategically
Gradually increase budgets for high-performing campaigns.
Allocate funds from low-performing campaigns to high-performing ones.
Use automated bidding to adjust to higher spend efficiently.
12.3 Geographic Expansion
If your business ships nationwide or internationally, test campaigns in new regions. Adjust bids and feed settings to account for local pricing, shipping costs, and consumer behavior.
Step 13: Continuous Feed and Campaign Optimization
Optimization is never a one-time effort. Bing Shopping campaigns require ongoing maintenance to maintain efficiency and ROI.
13.1 Monitor Feed Quality
Check for errors or disapprovals in the Microsoft Merchant Center.
Update new product launches and remove discontinued items.
Optimize product titles and descriptions regularly based on query performance.
13.2 Regular Performance Audits
Review campaigns weekly or monthly.
Identify top-performing and underperforming products.
Adjust bids, budgets, and targeting as needed.
13.3 Keep Up with Bing Features
Bing regularly updates campaign features, including new automated bidding strategies, audience targeting options, and ad formats. Staying updated ensures your campaigns leverage the latest capabilities for maximum performance.
Conclusion
Optimizing Bing Shopping campaigns is both an art and a science. Success depends on three pillars: high-quality product feeds, strategic campaign structure, and continuous performance monitoring. By leveraging audience targeting, advanced bidding strategies, remarketing, and seasonal optimization, businesses can maximize visibility, CTR, and ROI.
For e-commerce businesses seeking to dominate the Microsoft Advertising landscape, a well-optimized Bing Shopping campaign is not just an option—it’s essential.
If you want expert assistance to optimize your Bing Shopping campaigns and drive higher ROI, check out our Bing PPC Management Services for tailored solutions that maximize results while minimizing wasted spend.
About Marketing LTB
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About the author, Bill Nash
Bill Nash is the CMO of Marketing LTB with over a decade of experience, he has driven growth for Fortune 500 companies and startups through data-driven campaigns and advanced marketing technologies. He has written over 400 pieces of content about marketing, covering topics like marketing tips, guides, AI in advertising, advanced PPC strategies, conversion optimization, and others.