- What has really changed in Microsoft's advertising structure?
- Should I review my Microsoft Ads budget now, or can I wait?
- What real numbers has this unification produced?
- What does it mean in practice if you run Bing and LinkedIn campaigns?
- Three concrete scenarios: what changes for an Italian company?
- Bing and LinkedIn vs. Google and Meta: where should you invest?
- Which risks and rules do I need to keep an eye on?
- Why it's in the news now: is the LinkedIn market in Italy really significant?
- How do you get started with the Bing+LinkedIn integration?
- What mistakes are most common when integrating Bing and LinkedIn?
- How do I know if the integrated Bing+LinkedIn strategy is working?
- So, is it really worth betting on the Microsoft ecosystem for your campaigns?
- How we see it at SHM
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Microsoft has merged Bing, Edge and LinkedIn into a single advertising line: there is no longer separate data for the two channels.
- Combined revenue grew 10% to $6.55 billion in the July-September 2026 quarter, with low double-digit growth forecast for the next quarter.
- For advertisers, the biggest news is cross-platform targeting (Bing + LinkedIn) with a single professional audience.
- Italy has 28.2 million LinkedIn users: ignoring this integration means leaving a big slice of the B2B audience untapped.
Microsoft has just stopped publishing Bing's growth figures on their own: starting this quarter, Bing and LinkedIn are a single line worth $6.55 billion. If you run campaigns on either channel, the rules of the game have changed.
What has really changed in Microsoft's advertising structure?
As of September 2026, Microsoft has merged Bing, Microsoft Edge, MSN and LinkedIn into a single revenue line called 'Search and advertising'. There are no longer separate numbers for search and for the professional social network.
Through June 2026, Microsoft reported Bing (search) and LinkedIn revenue as two separate line items. Starting with the first quarter of fiscal year 2027 (July-September 2026), that separation is gone. The new Search and advertising line brings together Bing, Microsoft Edge, MSN, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions and Premium Subscriptions (LinkedIn's paid memberships).
The result is a much bigger number: annual revenue for the combined line in fiscal year 2026 was $24.84 billion, versus the $15.18 billion Bing alone generated in the same period. The difference, about $9.66 billion, is the LinkedIn portion now included in the total, according to PPC Land's calculation.
For anyone buying ad space, this change isn't just about accounting. It means Microsoft is building a single ecosystem where the same professional audience can be reached both in search and in the LinkedIn feed.
| Item | Before (until June 2026) | After (from July 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Bing / search | Separate line, data published | Within 'Search and advertising' |
| LinkedIn Marketing Solutions | Separate line, data published | Within 'Search and advertising' |
| LinkedIn Talent & Sales Solutions | Within LinkedIn | Within 'Industry solutions cloud' |
| LinkedIn (total) | Total revenue published | No longer published as a total |
| Ex-TAC metric | Bing only, excluding traffic acquisition costs | Bing + LinkedIn Marketing + Premium Sub |
Should I review my Microsoft Ads budget now, or can I wait?
If you already have active campaigns on Bing or LinkedIn, it's worth doing a review before year-end: the new integrated targeting options are already available, and October-December is the quarter with the highest growth forecast.
Microsoft drove low double-digit growth for the October-December 2026 quarter, with volumes and prices up across LinkedIn, Edge and Bing. Waiting means entering a more crowded auction with less historical data on the integration.
| Your situation | Should you review now? | why |
|---|---|---|
| You have active Bing campaigns, none on LinkedIn | Yes | You can extend your professional audience without changing platform |
| You have LinkedIn campaigns, none on Bing | Yes | You can reach the same audience during active search too |
| You have both, managed separately | Yes | The integration enables shared audiences and controlled frequency |
| Budget under €500/month on both | Partially | Test with one audience segment first, then scale |
| Google Ads only, no Microsoft presence | Currency | The Bing+LinkedIn integration creates a credible B2B alternative to Google |
What real numbers has this unification produced?
In the July-September 2026 quarter, the combined line generated $6.55 billion, up 10% year over year. The metric net of traffic acquisition costs grew 12%, driven by LinkedIn, Edge and Bing.
The most useful figure for anyone running campaigns isn't total revenue, but ex-TAC growth, meaning growth net of the costs Microsoft pays partner sites to bring in traffic. This metric grew 12%, which means the platform is becoming more efficient: revenue is growing faster than distribution costs.
Growth was driven by an increase in both the volume of ads sold and the average price. Microsoft didn't provide a breakdown across the three channels (LinkedIn, Edge, Bing), but CFO Amy Hood cited all three as positive contributors.
What does it mean in practice if you run Bing and LinkedIn campaigns?
The merger doesn't change the ad buying platforms, but it paves the way for shared audience strategies and more integrated budget planning across search and professional social.
Microsoft Advertising (the platform where you buy ad space on Bing) and LinkedIn Campaign Manager remain two separate tools. But the accounting merger reflects a strategic direction already underway: Microsoft is building bridges between the two ecosystems.
One concrete example already available: LinkedIn Company Lists let you use LinkedIn's company data to target ads on Bing. If you sell to professionals or businesses, you can reach the same person both when they search on Bing and when they scroll the LinkedIn feed.
- 1 · Marketing managerMap overlapping audiencesIdentify the customer segments you use on LinkedIn and check whether matching keywords exist on Bing. They're often the same people at different stages of the buying process.
- 2 · Ads managerTurn on LinkedIn targeting on BingUse LinkedIn Company Lists in Microsoft Advertising to bring LinkedIn's B2B precision to your search campaigns too.
- 3 · Marketing managerReview your campaign KPIsWith unified data, cost per lead should be calculated across the entire Bing+LinkedIn funnel, not channel by channel. Otherwise you risk optimizing the wrong way.
- 4 · Ads managerMonitor cross-channel frequencyThe same user can see your ad on both Bing and LinkedIn. Without frequency control, you risk saturating the audience and raising your cost per click.
- 5 · Marketing managerUpdate your reportingHistorical benchmarks for Bing and LinkedIn separately are no longer comparable with the new aggregated data. Build a fresh baseline starting this quarter.
Three concrete scenarios: what changes for an Italian company?
The impact varies widely depending on your industry and the type of customer you want to reach. Here are three typical scenarios, with the budget reasoning behind each.
The numbers that follow are illustrative examples: they show the logic of the reasoning and are not real client data.
| Company type | Current situation | Opportunity with the integration | Suggested action |
|---|---|---|---|
| B2B consulting firm | LinkedIn Ads only, €2,000/month budget | Add Bing to reach the same companies during active search (e.g. 'ERP software for SMEs') | Allocate 20-30% of the budget to Bing with LinkedIn Company Lists targeting |
| B2B e-commerce (industrial supplies) | Google Ads only, no Microsoft presence | Bing has a higher market share among business users on Windows PCs; LinkedIn reaches decision makers | Run a 3-month test on Bing with a separate budget, then evaluate LinkedIn for remarketing |
| Manufacturing company with international customers | LinkedIn Ads for awareness, Bing not used | Industry-sector targeting on LinkedIn + product keywords on Bing in a single funnel | Map your product keywords and build Bing campaigns that mirror your active LinkedIn audiences |
Bing and LinkedIn vs. Google and Meta: where should you invest?
Google dominates search, Meta dominates consumer social. With Bing+LinkedIn, Microsoft occupies a specific niche: the professional B2B audience in active research mode, with less competition and often lower costs per click.
If you run campaigns, you already know that prioritizing and allocating budget on Google Ads is an increasingly complex choice. Microsoft's integration opens up a third path worth considering, especially if you sell to professionals or companies.
| platform | Strength | Main limitation | Ideal for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | Dominant search volume, complete ecosystem | Rising cost per click, high competition | Any industry, B2C and B2B |
| Meta Ads | Demographic and interest targeting, consumer reach | Less precise professional audience, non-work context | B2C, e-commerce, brand awareness |
| Microsoft Bing + LinkedIn | Precise professional audience, targeting by company and role, less competition | Lower search volume than Google, high LinkedIn cost per click | B2B, professional services, software, corporate training |
| Pinterest Ads | Visual purchase intent, specific niches | Limited audience, vertical sectors | Design, home furnishings, fashion, food |
Which risks and rules do I need to keep an eye on?
The integration creates opportunities, but also new risks: less transparent data, historical benchmarks that are no longer comparable, and greater complexity in measuring return on ad spend.
The main risk is optimizing on the wrong data. If you compare this quarter's performance with last year's using the old Bing metrics, you're comparing different things. Microsoft has restated the last four quarters on the new basis, but companies' internal reporting systems often don't update automatically.
A second risk concerns privacy and GDPR. LinkedIn collects detailed professional data. Using it for cross-platform targeting requires your campaigns to comply with European data protection rules, especially for retargeting. It's worth checking with your legal counsel before activating shared audiences.
On the competitive front, the merger makes it harder to tell how fast Bing is growing on its own compared with LinkedIn. If you do competitive benchmarking, you lose an important reference point.
| Risk | Probability | How to mitigate |
|---|---|---|
| Historical benchmarks are not comparable | High | Build a new baseline starting from Q1 FY2027 (Jul-Sep 2026) |
| Double exposure of the same audience | Medium | Set separate frequency caps for Bing and LinkedIn |
| GDPR non-compliance in cross-platform targeting | Medium | Check LinkedIn and Microsoft Advertising policies with your company DPO |
| Misallocated budget without separate data | High | Use distinct UTMs and conversion tags for Bing and LinkedIn even if the budget is unified |
| Higher cost per click as the platform grows | Medium | Track monthly CPL (cost per lead) and set up automatic alerts |
Why it's in the news now: is the LinkedIn market in Italy really significant?
With 28.2 million LinkedIn users in Italy, nearly half the population, and a global advertising market for the platform projected to hit $9.7 billion in 2026, ignoring this channel is an increasingly hard choice for B2B companies to defend.
NapoleonCat data shows that in September 2026, LinkedIn users in Italy reached 28.2 million, or 47.3% of the total population. The largest group is ages 25 to 34, with 11 million users: exactly the age range that makes purchasing decisions at SMEs.
In Europe, social advertising reached €35.5 billion in 2025, up 19.2%, making it the fastest-growing format according to the IAB Europe AdEx Benchmark 2025 report. LinkedIn is one of the main beneficiaries of this growth.
How do you get started with the Bing+LinkedIn integration?
It starts with an audit of your existing campaigns. Then you build a structure of shared audiences and set up a measurement system that keeps the two channels separate, even when the budget is unified.
Before you move any budget, it helps to know where your customers already are. That holds true even if you're thinking about diversifying away from Google, as we explain in our analysis of walled gardens and the concentration of ad budgets.
- 1 · Ads managerAudit your existing campaignsExport the last 12 months of data from Bing and LinkedIn separately. Identify the audiences, keywords and segments that produced leads or conversions.
- 2 · Marketing managerDefine your target professional audienceWhich industries, job roles and company sizes do you want to reach? LinkedIn lets you target by job title, industry and company size with a precision Bing alone can't match.
- 3 · Ads managerActivate LinkedIn Company Lists on BingIn Microsoft Advertising you can import company lists from LinkedIn to target the same decision makers in your search campaigns too. It's the most powerful feature of the integration.
- 4 · Ads managerSet up separate UTMs and conversion tagsEven if the budget is unified, keep tracking separate for Bing and LinkedIn. Otherwise you can't optimize each channel.
- 5 · Marketing managerDefine the test KPIsDecide what you'll measure before you launch: cost per lead, conversion rate, lead quality (e.g. company size, contact role). Give the test at least 60 days before drawing conclusions.
What mistakes are most common when integrating Bing and LinkedIn?
The most common mistake is treating the two channels as interchangeable. They have different buying logic, formats and funnel stages, even when the audience is the same.
A second frequent mistake is copying ads from one channel to the other without adapting them. Copy that works on Bing (short, keyword-driven) falls flat on LinkedIn, where users aren't actively searching. The same goes for formats: LinkedIn Sponsored Content calls for an editorial approach that Bing text ads don't need.
If you run campaigns on Meta, you already know that automated optimization models change the rules of the game, as happened with the unified GEM AI model in Meta Ads. Microsoft is heading in a similar direction with AI Max, its automated optimization system. Relying blindly on automation without understanding how it works is a risk here too.
| Error | Consequence | How to avoid it |
|---|---|---|
| Copying ads from Bing to LinkedIn without adapting them | Low CTR, high cost per click, audience that doesn't convert | Create creatives specific to each channel and format |
| Merging conversion tracking | Impossible to optimize individual channels | Separate UTMs and tags for each channel |
| Comparing 2026 data with pre-unification data | Skewed benchmarks, wrong decisions | Build a new baseline from July 2026 |
| Ignoring the cross-channel frequency cap | Saturated audience, higher cost per impression | Set separate frequency caps on Bing and LinkedIn |
| Relying only on Microsoft AI Max automation | Loss of control over targeting and bidding | Monitor weekly and set daily budget limits |
How do I know if the integrated Bing+LinkedIn strategy is working?
There are three signals to monitor: cost per lead across the whole funnel, lead quality (role and company size) and the audience overlap rate between the two channels.
The most important metric isn't cost per click but cost per qualified lead: how much you spend to get a contact that matches your ideal customer. On LinkedIn this figure is often higher in absolute terms, but the lead is more precise. On Bing the cost per click is lower, but quality varies. The integration works when the two channels complement each other, not when they cannibalize each other.
It's also worth watching how search formats are evolving. Developments like the Google Universal Cart show that search is turning into a direct purchase channel, and Microsoft is moving the same way with its AI integrations.
| Indicator | What it measures | Monitoring frequency | Positive signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per qualified lead (CPL) | Efficiency of the entire Bing+LinkedIn funnel | Weekly | CPL stable or falling with unchanged quality |
| Conversion rate by channel | Which channel converts best at which stage | Biweekly | Bing converts better at the bottom of the funnel, LinkedIn at the top |
| Lead quality (job title, company size) | Precision of professional targeting | Monthly | Increase in the % of leads with decision-making roles |
| Cross-channel exposure frequency | Audience saturation | Weekly | Frequency under 5 impressions/user/week |
| Bing Impression Share | Visibility in search auctions | Monthly | Stable or growing Impression Share |
So, is it really worth betting on the Microsoft ecosystem for your campaigns?
Worth it if you have B2B customers, sell to professionals or businesses, and want to reach decision makers both when they search and in their professional feed. The Bing+LinkedIn integration is the most precise combination available today for this goal, with less competition than on Google.
A middle ground: you work in a mixed B2B/B2C sector or have a limited budget. It's worth testing with 15-20% of your digital budget, measuring CPL for 60 days and then deciding whether to scale.
Not yet if you sell exclusively to end consumers, have a budget under €300/month, or your industry has no significant presence on LinkedIn. In these cases, Google and Meta remain the priorities.
How we see it at SHM
For us, the Bing-LinkedIn merger isn't just an accounting reorganization. It's a sign that Microsoft is building an advertising ecosystem that rivals Google, with a specific edge with professional audiences. We believe AI should be integrated to free businesses from routine work, and that applies to campaign management too: automating bidding and targeting makes sense, but only if you understand what you're optimizing and why.
In the projects we work on, we often see B2B companies using LinkedIn only for brand awareness and not using Bing at all. The integration changes the math: together, the two channels can cover the entire professional funnel with a consistency that used to require different tools. It isn't a solution for everyone, but if you sell to professionals, it's a concrete opportunity to evaluate now, not six months from now.
If you want to understand how to structure an integrated campaign strategy on Microsoft, explore our LinkedIn campaigns service, our Google Ads campaigns service (for comparison and budget diversification) and our data processing and business intelligence service to build a measurement system that keeps channels separate even when the budget is unified. You can also browse all the articles in the Marketing and ad performance cluster to stay up to date on paid media developments.
Frequently Asked Questions
At the campaign reporting level in Microsoft Advertising, you can still see performance broken out by channel. What has changed is Microsoft's public financial reporting: the company no longer publishes Bing and LinkedIn revenue as separate line items. For your campaigns, use separate UTMs and conversion tags to keep visibility into each channel.
Not directly. Prices on Bing and LinkedIn are still set by separate auctions. However, the integration creates new targeting possibilities that may increase competition on certain professional audience segments, which could affect cost per click over time. Microsoft has driven growth in volumes and prices for the October-December 2026 quarter.
LinkedIn Company Lists let you upload a list of target companies to Microsoft Advertising and use it to target Bing search ads at users who work at those companies. It's one of the most useful features of the integration for B2B: it combines LinkedIn's precise professional targeting with Bing's search intent.
There's no official threshold, but to get statistically significant data in 60 days, we recommend allocating at least €500-800 per month per channel. With smaller budgets, there isn't enough data to optimize. These are illustrative examples: the real threshold depends on the cost per click in your industry.
Yes. The reorganization is global and covers all Microsoft Advertising and LinkedIn Campaign Manager campaigns, including those in Italy. With 28.2 million LinkedIn users in Italy (source: NapoleonCat, September 2026), the Italian market is one of the most relevant in Europe for this kind of integration.
Historical Bing benchmarks (cost per click, impression share, conversion rate) can no longer be compared directly with post-July 2026 data, because the makeup of the metric has changed. Microsoft has restated the last four quarters on the new basis, but companies' internal reporting systems need to be updated manually. Create a new baseline starting in July 2026.
The Bing-LinkedIn unification isn't financial news. It's the moment the Italian professional audience becomes reachable with a precision that used to require two separate strategies.
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