Getting More from the Microsoft Audience Network for B2B Campaigns

The Microsoft Audience Network sits alongside search campaigns as an option within the Microsoft Advertising platform, serving native ads across MSN, Outlook.com, Microsoft Edge and a network of publisher partner sites. For B2B advertisers, it offers a way to reach professional audiences beyond search results, but the channel requires a different approach from search campaigns to produce meaningful results. Priority Pixels provides Microsoft Ads management for B2B campaigns where every channel within the platform, including MSAN, is assessed on its actual contribution to pipeline rather than treated as a default setting that runs in the background.

MSAN sits in an interesting position for B2B marketers. Microsoft owns LinkedIn, which gives the Audience Network access to professional demographic data that no other native advertising platform can match. You can target ads based on job function, company size, industry and seniority level. That’s a clear advantage for companies selling to specific professional audiences. But the network also has well-documented quality concerns, particularly around click fraud on partner sites and questionable placement transparency, that mean B2B advertisers need to approach it with their eyes open rather than simply accepting the default settings when building campaigns.

What the Microsoft Audience Network Covers

MSAN delivers native ads across Microsoft-owned properties and a network of third-party publisher sites. The ads appear as content recommendations, in-feed placements and sidebar units that blend with the surrounding editorial content. They’re image-based ads, typically using responsive ad formats where you supply headlines, descriptions and images. The platform assembles them to fit each placement.

The distinction between MSAN and Microsoft search campaigns matters for B2B advertisers. Search campaigns reach people who are actively looking for something specific. They’ve typed a query into Bing that signals commercial intent. MSAN, by contrast, reaches people while they’re doing something else entirely. They might be reading the news on MSN, checking email in Outlook or browsing content on a partner site. The intent signal is weaker, which fundamentally changes how you should evaluate the channel’s performance and what you should expect from it.

Microsoft positions MSAN as an audience-first channel, meaning the targeting comes from who the person is rather than what they’re searching for. The Microsoft Advertising documentation on MSAN describes it as a way to reach high-quality audiences at scale through native placements. For B2B, the LinkedIn-powered targeting data is the main draw, offering something that Google’s Display Network and other programmatic options can’t replicate without a separate LinkedIn Ads budget.

LinkedIn Profile Targeting Sets MSAN Apart

The reason B2B advertisers should pay attention to MSAN at all comes down to one feature. LinkedIn profile targeting is the differentiator. Because Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in 2016, the Audience Network can use LinkedIn’s professional identity data to target ads. You can layer targeting by company name, industry, job function and company size onto your MSAN campaigns, reaching specific professional segments without needing to run separate campaigns on LinkedIn itself.

For a company selling enterprise software, for example, you could target MSAN ads specifically at people who work at companies with 500 or more employees, hold director-level positions in IT or operations. They might work in financial services or manufacturing. That level of professional granularity on a native advertising network is unusual. Search Engine Land’s guide to Microsoft Audience Network has highlighted this LinkedIn integration as the platform’s strongest feature for B2B advertisers. It’s difficult to disagree with that assessment.

The LinkedIn targeting also works as a bid modifier on search campaigns, not just on MSAN. But within MSAN specifically, it defines who sees your native ads. Without it, MSAN placements would be little more than display advertising on Microsoft properties. With LinkedIn data layered on, they become targeted placements reaching specific professional profiles while they consume content.

The Quality Concerns B2B Advertisers Should Know About

An honest assessment of MSAN for B2B lead generation needs to address the quality issues that many advertisers have reported. The platform has faced consistent criticism around click quality on partner sites, with advertisers in various industries reporting inflated click volumes from placements that don’t produce any downstream engagement or conversions. This isn’t unique to MSAN. Google’s Display Network faces similar criticism. But for B2B campaigns where every lead matters and sales teams follow up individually, poor click quality is more than a budget nuisance. It’s a time and resource drain.

The partner network within MSAN is where the quality concerns are concentrated. Microsoft-owned properties like MSN and Outlook tend to deliver better engagement metrics than the broader partner network, which includes sites where ad placement quality and audience relevance can vary significantly.

The response from WordStream’s analysis of Microsoft Ads performance and from advertisers who have tested the channel extensively is fairly consistent. MSAN can work for brand awareness at the top of the funnel, but expecting it to match search campaign conversion rates for direct lead generation is unrealistic. The people seeing your ads aren’t searching for your product. They’re reading an article or checking their inbox. The intent gap between search and native advertising means conversion rates will be lower and cost per lead will be higher. The quality of leads generated through MSAN typically requires more nurturing before they’re ready for a sales conversation.

When MSAN Makes Sense for B2B Campaigns

MSAN is at its most useful for B2B when it’s treated as a brand awareness and audience warming channel rather than a direct response lead generation tool. Companies that get results from the network tend to use it for specific purposes within a broader campaign structure rather than running it as a standalone lead source.

The scenarios where MSAN adds value for B2B include retargeting website visitors with native ads across Microsoft properties, building familiarity with a target audience before they enter a buying cycle, promoting content (whitepapers, reports, webinars) where the conversion action is a content download rather than a sales enquiry. It also works for reinforcing brand presence among specific professional segments defined by LinkedIn targeting data. These are all upper-funnel and mid-funnel activities where the expectation is awareness and engagement rather than immediate conversion.

The table above reflects what most B2B advertisers find after testing MSAN. The channel has a role, but that role isn’t replacing paid search campaigns as the primary lead generation mechanism. It works best as a complement to search, extending your presence to moments when your target audience is consuming content rather than actively searching.

Setting Up MSAN Campaigns Properly

If you decide to test MSAN for your B2B campaigns, the setup process follows the standard Microsoft Ads campaign structure. You create a campaign, select “Audience” as the campaign type, define your targeting, build your ads and set your budget. The critical decisions are in the targeting and the placement controls.

First, use LinkedIn profile targeting from the start. Running MSAN without professional targeting removes the feature that makes it worth considering for B2B in the first place. Define your ideal customer profile by job function, company size, industry and seniority, then apply those as targeting criteria rather than just bid modifiers.

Second, consider excluding the partner network initially and running only on Microsoft-owned properties (MSN, Outlook.com, Microsoft Edge). This limits your reach but concentrates your spend on the placements with better quality signals. You can always expand to include partner sites later once you’ve established baseline performance metrics on Microsoft’s own properties.

• Set separate budgets for MSAN and search campaigns so native ad spend doesn’t compete with your higher-converting search budget
• Use image assets that reflect B2B professionalism rather than stock photography that looks like consumer advertising
• Write ad copy that speaks to specific professional pain points rather than generic brand messaging
• Implement UET conversion tracking before launching so you can measure actual business outcomes from MSAN traffic
• Review placement reports weekly during the first month to identify and exclude low-quality partner sites

The placement report is where B2B advertisers need to pay the closest attention. Microsoft provides reporting on which sites within the partner network served your ads. PPC Hero’s coverage of MSAN best practices recommends reviewing these reports frequently and building an exclusion list of sites that generate clicks without any corresponding conversions or engagement on your website. The most effective way to improve MSAN performance over time is to systematically remove the placements that waste budget.

MSAN vs LinkedIn Ads for B2B Targeting

Since MSAN uses LinkedIn data for targeting, the natural question is why not just run LinkedIn Ads directly. The answer depends on budget, objectives and the audience you’re trying to reach. LinkedIn Ads offers a richer set of targeting options, including skills, group membership, specific company targeting and lookalike audiences. The ad formats on LinkedIn (sponsored content, InMail, conversation ads) are designed for professional engagement. But LinkedIn Ads are expensive. Cost per click in B2B verticals on LinkedIn typically runs significantly higher than on MSAN for similar targeting criteria.

MSAN offers a way to use a subset of LinkedIn’s data at a lower cost point, delivered through native ad placements rather than in-feed professional content. The trade-off is that your ads appear on MSN and Outlook rather than in the LinkedIn feed, which means the context is different. Someone reading a news article on MSN is in a different mindset from someone scrolling their LinkedIn feed looking at professional content. The same targeting data applied in a less professionally relevant environment produces different results.

For companies already running Google Ads and considering where to allocate additional budget, the priority order for most B2B organisations should be Microsoft search campaigns first (to capture Bing search intent at lower CPCs than Google), then LinkedIn Ads for targeted professional engagement, then MSAN for broader awareness using LinkedIn data at a lower cost point. Treating MSAN as a substitute for either search campaigns or direct LinkedIn advertising usually produces disappointing results because it occupies a different position in the funnel.

Measuring MSAN Performance for B2B

The metrics that matter for MSAN in a B2B context are different from what you’d track on search campaigns. Click-through rate and cost per click still matter, but the primary evaluation should focus on post-click engagement and downstream pipeline contribution. Check how long MSAN visitors spend on your site, how many pages they view, whether they return later through other channels and whether any of them eventually convert into leads.

Microsoft’s UET tag tracks conversions and allows you to set up view-through conversion windows, which attribute a conversion to an ad impression even if the user didn’t click. For brand awareness campaigns on MSAN, view-through conversions provide a more complete picture of the channel’s contribution than click-based attribution alone. If someone sees your MSAN ad, doesn’t click, but later searches for your company name on Bing or Google and converts through a search ad, view-through tracking captures that influence.

The Semrush guide to Microsoft Advertising notes that cross-channel attribution is particularly important for native advertising where direct conversions are lower. Setting up proper attribution before spending on MSAN means you’ll have the data to make an informed decision about whether to continue, scale or cut the channel after a meaningful testing period. Two to three months of consistent data usually provides enough signal to evaluate whether MSAN is contributing value for your specific B2B audience.

Priority Pixels approaches MSAN as one component within a broader Microsoft Ads strategy for B2B clients, not as a standalone channel. The honest assessment is that it works well for awareness, retargeting and content promotion when paired with strong LinkedIn profile targeting, but it isn’t a replacement for well-built landing pages fed by high-intent search traffic. The companies that get the best results from MSAN are those that set appropriate expectations, monitor placement quality closely and treat the channel as part of an integrated paid media approach rather than an isolated experiment.