Microsoft Audience Network: How to Avoid Wasted Spend on Bad Placements

Watch the full video: Microsoft Audience Network: How to Avoid Wasted Spend On Bad Placement

What if I told you that one of our biggest growth channels this year hasn’t been Google, but actually Microsoft/Bing? Specifically, the Microsoft Audience Network has been a channel we’ve explored much more and had real success with.

I know that surprises a lot of people. Frankly, it surprised us too. But many forget that there are actually some premium placements within the Microsoft Audience Network — sites like MSN, Outlook, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. These are legitimate, high-quality places to get your ads in front of prospects.

But here’s the catch: you have to do a good job at excluding the placements you don’t want. Without active placement management, your budget will leak into low-quality sites that deliver nothing.

How to Audit Your Placements

Step 1: Pull the Website URL Report

Within your Microsoft Ads account, navigate to Reporting and look for the report called Website URL. Open this report and sort it by impressions. Take a close look at the website URLs in this column — you’re looking for sites where you do not want your company to appear.

If you find URLs on that list that are low quality, irrelevant, or brand-unsafe, it’s time to build your exclusion list.

Step 2: Export and Identify Bad Placements

Download the report as a CSV. Go through the URLs and identify the ones you want to exclude. Pull those into a separate list — one URL per line.

Step 3: Add Exclusions in the Platform

Go back into the Microsoft Ads platform, navigate to Tools > Content Suitability, and find the Account Exclusions section. Paste your URLs in — one site per line — and add them.

Account-Level vs. Campaign-Level Exclusions

There’s an important distinction here. When you’re in the Microsoft Manager Account level, you can only set account-level exclusions. If you want to exclude placements from specific campaigns only, you need to go into the individual Microsoft account level — that’s where you’ll find the option for campaign-specific exclusions.

Tools to Make This Easier

Doing this manually works, but it’s time-consuming. A software we use called The Genius handles all of this for you. It shows you all the URLs you’ve appeared on, lets you click to add exclusions quickly, and is much cleaner and simpler than the manual export process.

Key Takeaways

• The Microsoft Audience Network has real premium placements — MSN, Outlook, WSJ, Washington Post — don’t write it off
• Actively audit your placement URLs by pulling the Website URL report and sorting by impressions
• Build exclusion lists aggressively — this is the difference between profitable Audience Network spend and wasted budget
• Use account-level exclusions for broad blocks and campaign-level exclusions for more targeted control
• Consider automation tools like The Genius to speed up the process significantly

The Microsoft Audience Network can be a genuine growth lever, but only if you’re disciplined about where your ads actually show up. Spend the time on placement hygiene and the returns will follow.