How to Integrate Microsoft Ads and Wicked Reports

The quick process to integrate Microsoft Ad costs and clicks to Wicked Reports lead and sale attribution.

1. Common Microsoft Wicked Reports Scenarios
2. How to Integrate Microsoft Ads with Wicked Reports
3. Troubleshooting

Common Microsoft Wicked Reports Scenarios

• Looking to get ROI on Microsoft ad spend
• Leads take time to buy from Microsoft ads and want to connect customer lifetime value back to ad spend
• High value subscription customers and you’d like the recurring purchase to track back to the top and middle of the funnel ad clicks
• Multiple ad accounts to connect to 1 Wicked Reports’ brand account

 

How to integrate Microsoft Ads with Wicked Reports

The Microsoft Ads Integration process consists of 3 steps

1. Connect your Microsoft Ads account(s) to your Wicked Reports account
2. Tracking template setup within your Microsoft Ads account
3. Wicked tracking script on all forms and destination URLs of your Microsoft Ads

Step #1 - Connect your Microsoft Ads account(s) to your Wicked Reports account

Go to the Authorizations Tab 

Click connect in the Microsoft Ads connection box under Advertising 

Follow the connection wizard instructions:

 

and pick the account that has rights to the ad account(s) you wish to connect to Wicked Reports.

After account success, you will see a screen like this:

Step #1 Tips:

1. You can select multiple ad accounts for 1 brand (we have some people with upwards of a dozen accounts for 1 advertiser).
2. If you don’t see your ad accounts listed, you might have to try a different email.
3. If you only have 1 account for that email, it will connect right away without the need to select a specific Microsoft ad account.
4. If you receive any odd messages from the Microsoft Ad wizard, contact support.
   
   

Step #2 Tracking template (Final URL Suffix) setup within your Microsoft Ads account(s)

The template should already be applied to your account and you should NOT need to perform these steps.  Only follow these steps if for some reason, the tracking template was not successfully added to the Final URL Suffix of your MS Ads account.

Microsoft makes it easy to track all ad clicks using their account level tracking template and Final URL Suffix.  By applying this template at the account level, all clicks will pass the necessary information for Wicked Reports to track and attribute clicks to leads and sales.

** If you have copied the tracking template from the previous step, continue on.  If not, here is the tracking template text you will want to copy: **

1. Log into Microsoft Ads
2. Navigate to Settings
   
    
3. Click on "Account level options"
   
   
4. Paste template into Final URL suffix
   
   
   
5. Click Save
   
   

Congratulations, at this point, all Microsoft ad clicks will have the necessary information the Wicked Reports tracking script needs to track and attribute.

Step #2 Tips:

• For Microsoft Smart Shopping Campaigns, the tracking template needs to be added at the product level. You'll need to add the template to the product feed "link", then test your URLs to make sure the template is appending correctly. As this is a relatively new type of campaign, we recommend reaching out to support@wickedreports.com so we can help verify it's tracking as expected.
• If you have UTMs that you already have set, that is ok, we use WickedSource and WickedID so as not to affect anything you have already setup.
• Your existing UTMs should be appended to the end of our tracking template text string provided.
• Redirect links will sometimes pass the tracking template parameters through to the final URL.  But you have to verify this is happening, and if not, update the redirect software setting to allow "UTM/Link parameter pass-through".  Some redirect software has this option.  This is a must, it will cause huge data accuracy issues if the correct tracking template parameters do not make it to the final post-redirect page that has our tracking script.
• Ads running to YouTube, or your Facebook Groups, your Instagram profile, or anywhere else, can sometimes be tracked using Wicked Redirect links. This is an advanced use case, contact support to see if we can pull this off (we have for others).

Step #3 - Wicked Reports tracking script on all forms and destination URLs of your Microsoft Ads

Now that we have the ad click info being sent to your pages, we need to have our tracking script on the pages ready to detect the clicks.

If you have Google Tag Manager deployed throughout your marketing stack, great news, follow these simple instructions here: https://help.wickedreports.com/wicked-tracking-code-with-google-tag-manager

Those of you without Google Tag Manager can find instructions in this section: https://help.wickedreports.com/setup#utm-and-tracking-setup

Step #3 Tips:

• Any page can be tested for Wicked tracking scripts using the tracking page validator https://help.wickedreports.com/tracking-validation
• When a page has embedded form or order form technology, we need the tracking script in that tech also, or you need to use the thank you page hack https://help.wickedreports.com/using-the-thank-you-page-hack-to-capture-optin-and-order-actions
• Reach out to your onboarding specialist if you have a tricky tech stack - we’ve seen it all and can set things up for you when it’s challenging - just ask.

 

Troubleshooting

• If you previously were using any UTMs in your Microsoft Ads Tracking Template or Final URL Suffix, once you update the Final URL Suffix as we suggest, you will get new rows of data in your ROI reports.  This is because we will be using different values for reporting so we can tie the clicks to the proper costs and give you accurate data. This is expected behavior and hopefully does not cause too much of an inconvenience.
  
  • Here's what the manual UTMs use to look like before our Native integration: 

    utm_source=Bing&utm_medium=PPC&utm_campaign={Campaign}&utm_content={AdGroup}&utm_term={TargetId}

• If you have followed the steps above and your clicks, leads, and sales are getting attributed to Microsoft Ads, but NOT lining up to costs, it is possible that you have UTMs set at the campaign, ad group, or ad level. UTMs at the lower Microsoft ad account levels will override account level UTM settings.  
• Sometimes the wrong Microsoft Ads account(s) get picked during setup.  You will want to verify which Microsoft ad accounts are connected to your Wicked Reports account here