Microsoft Advertising vs Google Ads: What’s New?

scopemarketinglabs
Jan 24
4 min read

Updated: Feb 5

A rural scene of an older man on a desktop computer browsing Microsoft ads vs a younger man on a laptop browsing Google Ads.

🔹 Microsoft Advertising: What’s New

Microsoft Advertising has been rolling out updates focused on creativity, AI tools, audience marketing, and unified workflows. Here are the key highlights marketers should know:

📌 Ads Studio & Brand Tools

Brand kit: Centralized brand assets (colors, fonts, logos) to maintain consistency across campaigns.
Display templates: Predefined visual templates to quickly create display ads.
Ads Studio: A shared asset library with AI-enhanced creative tools. You can find Shutterstock images, pull assets from your website, or generate new visuals.

🤖 AI & Automation

Copilot in Microsoft Advertising Platform: An AI assistant that answers questions, diagnoses issues, and guides advertisers. This feature accelerates setup and troubleshooting.
AI-generated imagery & backgrounds: Built into Ads Studio.

🎯 Campaign & Audience Features

Impression-based remarketing: A remarketing list that automatically updates as people view your ads.
Lifetime budgets: Spend a fixed amount over a campaign’s life, rather than daily budgets. This is especially useful for audience campaigns.
Multi-ad format audience campaigns: Combine Display, Native, and Video within one campaign.
Pinned call extensions for vertical ads: Add direct call options (phone/QR) to drive leads.

📊 Reporting & Control

Report Builder: Customized reporting with advanced filters and breakdowns for analytics.
Content exclusions: Brand-safety controls to prevent ads from appearing near sensitive content.

📺 Expanded Ad Types

Ads for Display, Video, and Connected TV (CTV) are more established and expanding across Microsoft’s network. This gives marketers brand awareness paths beyond search.

Bottom Line: Microsoft Advertising now blends creative control, automation, and AI support with expanded campaign formats. This makes it a strong option for visibility and multi-format outreach.

🔹 Google Ads: What’s New in 2025/26

Google Ads in 2025 continued to shift toward AI-powered campaign management, deeper automation, richer insights, and new creative innovations:

🤖 AI-Driven Campaigns

AI Max: A new AI suite that enhances Search and makes hyper-optimized recommendations, including keywordless targeting and URL expansion.
Agentic solutions & Meridian measurement: These open new AI-first workflows and smarter measurement systems to link paid efforts to outcomes.

📈 Performance & Full-Funnel Tools

Performance Max enhancements: Better transparency, asset testing, and placement insights across Google properties.
Demand Gen: Expanded to give richer discovery and awareness campaigns across YouTube, Gmail, Discover, and Display.
New bidding options: High value mode, custom experiments, and smarter bidding strategies.

📊 Control & Targeting Improvements

Campaign-level negative keywords and exclusion tools: More curated control over inventory and audiences.
Shop placement & mobile-first formats: Vertical image support and mobile-friendly ad formats.

📱 Creative & Asset Workflows

Asset Studio: A centralized hub for managing creative assets across campaigns.
AI-generated images & videos: These scale creatives automatically across placements.
Expanded Merchant Center video support: Better shopping experiences in Performance Max.

💡 Broader Ecosystem Shifts

Google is increasingly embedding ads into AI Overviews/AI Mode. Experimentation continues in areas like Shopping and conversational commerce. However, advertising in generative products remains cautious.

Big Picture: Google Ads in 2025/26 is a highly automated, AI-oriented engine where human strategy and first-party data boost performance. Creative assets can influence results dramatically.

🆚 Audience Differences

One of the biggest questions advertisers ask is: “Who actually uses Microsoft Advertising vs Google Ads, and how do they use the platforms differently?”

👥 Demographics & User Profiles

Microsoft Advertising (Bing):

- Slightly older demographics overall, with higher representation among affluent, professional, B2B buyers.

- Users tend to have higher average income and desktop usage, often leading to stronger conversions in niches like software, finance, and B2B services.

- Often the choice for medium to large businesses utilizing Microsoft server-based programs.

Google Ads:

- Broad global reach across virtually all age groups and industries.

- Particularly strong in high-intent consumer search and mass-market e-commerce.

- With properties like YouTube, Gmail, Discover, Google reaches users earlier in the funnel as well as at the point of decision.

- Often used by smaller businesses, independents, and startups.

(Note: Exact regional demographic breakdowns can vary, but the general pattern is that Bing skews older and more affluent, while Google spans the largest global audience.)

📍 Where Can Ads Appear? Platform Inventory