Import Google Ads into Bing – Step by Step Guide & Best Practices

Bing is already known for cheaper CPC and higher conversion rates across many industries in the US compared to Google. That’s one of the main reasons why many of the advertisers are also considering Bing other than Google for online advertising.

If you try to create campaigns separately on Google as well as on Bing, it will be too cumbersome. Although both Google and Bing offer offline editors such as AdWords Editor and Bing Editor to make the work faster and smart, still handling two platforms is too much of work.

One easy way of handling Google as well as Bing side by side is to importing the Google ads campaign to Bing and syncing the Bing account to Google except for some minor changes. Through that way, you only have to make changes on one of the platforms, let’s say, Google and changes will automatically reflect on Bing. I prefer making changes on Google and then syncing on Bing because I find it easier to Handle Google ads platform. So, without further waiting, let us see how to sync & import Google ads account to Bing.

1. Importing Google Ads to Bing & Syncing Accounts

  • Login to your Bing Dashboard
  • Under Import campaigns option, click on import from Google Ads

Import campaign from Google option

  • You can also use the third option from the drop down to set a schedule for your import.
  • The import schedules are on the following basis:
    • Now
    • Once
    • Daily
    • Weekly and,
    • Monthly

Schedule imports from google to bing

1.1 Sign into Google

  • The next prompt will ask you to sign into your Google accounts. The Google account has to be the same as that of the one associated with your Google ads account.
  • After you sign in, you will have to choose your Google ads account.

Import Google Ads - Google sign in

1.2 Choose Google Ads campaigns to import

  • Once you have successfully signed in and chose your google ads account, you will have to then choose your google ads campaigns which you want to import
  • You can either import all of the campaigns or you can choose to import specific ones that you select
  • Initially, when you are importing, I would suggest you importing just one campaign and play around that to get familiar with the Bing platform if you are already no.
  • There is also an option to import paused campaigns as well.

Choose Google Ads campaigns to import on Google

1.3 Choose Import options from Google to Bing

  • Once you click on Continue from the previous step, you will have to choose options for importing ads campaigns from Google to Bing.
  • Before I explain further on the options, there are two advanced options which once learned come very handy from the next time.
  • So, click on both of the Show advanced options links. clicking on them will open advanced options which will give you better manual control over your campaigns

Choose Import options from Google to Bing

1.4 Choose from Detailed Campaign options

Once you open the advanced options, you have to mainly focus on the following items

1.4.1 Items not previously imported into Bing Ads

This option will basically import only those campaign field items which are already not there on your Bing platform. One major problem with only this option selected is:

  • An optimized bing campaign might get extra campaigns data which are already not there in the campaign such as more new keywords, Locations, Ad Schedules, Demographic, device, etc.
  • The new “not previously imported items” might further mess up your current Bing campaign.

1.4.2 Update to existing items

This option does not update or change the following items of your existing Bing campaign even though Google Ad campaign items are different

  • Campaign and Ad group settings
  • Existing Ads
  • Keywords and negative keywords

Besides, the above items, it will update all the fields that were a part of the “1.3 Choose Import options from Google to Bing” and the following items:

  • Campaign status
  • Ad groups status
  • Keyword Status and,
  • Ad status

For more details on what gets imported, here is the link to the article explaining everything on bing.

Detailed Campaign Import option from Bing to Google

2. Importing Google Ads to Bing Best practices:

  • By appropriately selecting the Items not previously imported into Bing Ads and the Targeting options, you can choose to import targeting, update targeting during a re-import, or leave them untouched.
  • I would prefer to make a new campaign fresh on Google Ads and select both options “Items not previously imported” and “update the existing items”, you basically import the entire new campaign. 
  • If you want to import an old campaign and the duplicate campaign of the same exist on bing, then to start from scratch, rename the campaign and Ad Groups and follow the above steps to import them fresh to avoid any confusion.
  • Otherwise, you can select individual items to import and carefully manually control your campaign fields.
  • You also have many other options to manually control what gets imported and what not.

2.1 Importing Google Ads to Bing rules

  • Checking both Updates to existing items and Targeting boxes will import new targeting, new Ad extensions, in campaigns and ad groups, and existing targeting in campaigns and ad groups will be overwritten.
  • Checking Updates to existing items and unchecking Targeting will import new targeting, new Ad extensions, in campaigns and ad groups, and existing targeting in campaigns and ad groups will not be overwritten.
  • Unchecking Updates to existing items, and checking Targeting, new targeting, new Ad extensions, in campaigns and ad groups will not be imported, and existing targeting in campaigns and ad groups will be overwritten.
  • Unchecking both Updates to existing items and Targeting, no targeting and no ad extensions in campaigns and ad groups will be added or overwritten.

2.2 Items that can’t be imported but can be re-created using Bing Ads

  • Account-level App Extensions
  • Ad group-level App Extensions
  • Ad group-level Location Extensions
  • Ad group-level Call Extensions
  • Automated rules
  • IP exclusions
  • Remarketing lists and associations

3. Import Message, Summary, and Errors

Once the importing of Google Ads campaign starts, you will see a message popup. This message will keep on updating itself until the import is completed.

Campaign Import message popup

3.1 Import Summary

Once the import is done, you will see a summary of the import depending on the options that you selected. For this article, I selected both of the options of updating and filling in new fields. That’s why the summary has the following four columns:

  • New – New values created
  • Updated – Existing values updated
  • Deleted – Existing values deleted
  • Skipped – Items that could not be updated, created or deleted

Import summary from google ads

If you have already noticed it, you can also view the imported campaigns and download the import errors in a sheet. I would suggest downloading the errors and having a glance at the errors. In my case, it looked something like this:

Campaign import error messages

You can see the type of error, error level and other details associated with the error. Then, you can go into the campaign and fix those.

Importing Google to Bing Hack

This one hack that many media buyers are still not aware of. When you import all the Google campaigns into Bing, select the option when Bing asks that if it can change the bids. Usually, we say no. But, if you say yes or select that option, Bing will automatically change the bids at different targeting levels such as device, day of the week or hour of the week, etc.

I usually use that feature as a hack to optimize my Google ads campaigns based on Bing’s machine learning analysis and auto-bidding. Here is an image of campaigns recently automatically modified by Bing in terms of bidding for the campaigns imported from Google ads:

Google campaigns bid modified on Bing by day and hour

Google campaigns bid modified on Bing by day and hour

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