This guide will show you how to set up tracking for the following Microsoft metrics in Northbeam:

• Spend,
• Impressions,
• Visits, and
• All conversion-based metrics attributed to Microsoft or Bing Ads.

This involves two simple steps:

• Step 1: Complete Requirements
• Step 2: Connect Your Microsoft Ad Account

🚧

Note on Historical Spend Backfill

When you connect your Microsoft Ads account, Northbeam backfills spend and performance data for up to 180 days prior to the connection date, or the date your Microsoft Account is connected to your Northbeam Dashboard)

Data earlier than 180 days before connection will not be pulled automatically. If you need older historical spend, this must be ingested via a Spend Sheet or Spend API.

Step 1: Complete Requirements

Before connecting, please ensure the following:

Requirement 1: Verify the Microsoft Advertising API Service for your Azure Tenant

1. Please reach out to your Microsoft Azure Active Directory administrator and ensure that you have at least one of the admin users from your Azure AAD tenant added and enabled for work accounts in the Microsoft Advertising web application, and that the Microsoft Advertising API Service (App ID: d42ffc93-c136-491d-b4fd-6f18168c68fd) is active with msads.manage and ads.manage permissions.

Requirement 2: Enable User Consent in Microsoft Entra

1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center as a Global Administrator.
2. Navigate to Identity → Applications → Enterprise Applications → Consent and permissions → User consent settings.
3. Choose one of the following settings:
   1. Allow user consent for apps from verified publishers, for selected permissions
   2. Let Microsoft manage your consent

Requirement 3: Confirm Business Microsoft Account

Confirm your account is a Business Account, not a Personal Account.

To confirm your account type:

1. In the Microsoft Ads portal, go to Settings > My Settings > Signed In With.
2. If your account is set to Personal, follow the link provided there to switch to Business.

Step 2: Connect Your Microsoft Ad Account

Northbeam natively integrates with the Microsoft Ads API. By doing so, we pull all your current and historical Campaigns, Adsets, and Ads from your account, along with a list of useful metrics. Notably, we pull impressions, which fuel our view model and unlock our Clicks + Modeled Views attribution model.

• Onboarding Flow - Navigate to Integrations
• Activated Dashboard - Go to Settings > Connections

For a visual walkthrough, reference the video below.

❗️

Connection Errors

If you attempt to connect your ad account and see an error message, please troubleshoot below:

• Error 105 - This is a permissions error. Please to enable 3rd party access on their Microsoft account. See Requirement #1 above.
• Error 106 - This is an account type error. Please connect using a business Microsoft account, rather than a personal account. See Requirement #2 above.

👍

Once your account is connected, you're all set!

Microsoft Ads FAQ

1. Do I need specific UTM parameters?

Nope! Once your account is connected, our pixel tracks all the data without needing to manually insert UTM parameters.

2. How far back does Microsoft Ads data backfill?

When you connect your Microsoft Ads account, Northbeam backfills spend and performance data for up to 180 days prior to the connection date.

Data earlier than 180 days before connection is not pulled automatically. This limitation exists because Microsoft only makes hourly spend data available for the last 180 days, and Northbeam’s Microsoft integration is built to process data at an hourly granularity.

If you need more than 180 days of historical Microsoft Ads spend, we recommend ingesting that data via a Spend Sheet or Spend API.

3. How do I connect an extra account or remove an account?

Reference our step-by-step guide below:

4. Why do I see a data discrepancy?

Discrepancies in Revenue and Orders are expected. The reason for this lies in the differences between Northbeam's attribution model and the corresponding platform's attribution model. Each attribution model has a unique method of allocating credit.

For example, Northbeam's Clicks-Only model divides credit across all touchpoints and tries to push credit to your upper funnel channels. Let's say your in-platform model uses Last Click, which gives credit to the last touchpoint in the journey. This is going to cause a discrepancy.

To take it one step further, let's say both Northbeam and in-platform are using Last Click. Northbeam is unique in that we recognize all touchpoints from every single channel. Whereas most platforms only recognize touchpoints from that same platform.

In addition, there's often a difference in the attribution window. By default, Northbeam leverages a 1-Day window, which is different than many other platforms' default.

To get the most apples to apples comparison, be sure to compare data using same Attribution Model and Attribution Window. But keep in mind, it will never be exact.

Attribution Models and Windows

Microsoft:

• Attribution Model: Last Click
• Attribution Window: 30-Day Click
  • Source: Microsoft Attribution Settings

Northbeam:

• Attribution Model: Varies (default is Clicks-Only)
• Attribution Window: 1-Day (default, can extend to an infinite lifetime value)

5. Suspect a Tracking Issue?

Please reference our Troubleshooting Tracking Issues FAQ

Check for Manually Applied Northbeam URL Parameters

Northbeam automatically injects the required tracking parameters for Microsoft Ads, so manually adding Northbeam UTMs or URL parameters is uncommon and may cause issues.

If tracking is not working correctly, check the Final URL Suffix field at the account, campaign, or ad level for any manually added Northbeam-specific parameters.

Manually added parameters may override the ones Northbeam automatically injects, since Microsoft Ads prioritizes the first matching parameter it sees. If those values are outdated or use invalid Microsoft macros, this can cause issues such as missing visits, blank Ad IDs, or incorrect campaign mapping.

If you find manually added Northbeam parameters, remove them and allow the automatically injected parameters to take over instead.

Still having trouble?

• Connection: Make sure your Ad Account is still connected. Go to Settings > Connections and check for any errors. Connections could break for a variety of reasons, but most commonly, the User losing access to the Ad Account.
• Northbeam Pixel: Ensure the Northbeam Pixel is firing on your landing page. Note that some site themes may not automatically transfer to landing pages on certain third-party apps, necessitating manual pixel placement.
• Purchase Pixel: Confirm that the Purchase Pixel is firing on your checkout page.
• A-Record Setup: Verify that the A-Record is correctly configured in your DNS Settings.
• If the Microsoft Advertising application ID (d42ffc93-c136-491d-b4fd-6f18168c68fd) doesn't exist in your Azure tenant: This can happen if you are trying to authenticate to a tool provider and never created your own Azure App registration and added msads.manage to it. To fix this, you will need to contact the Active Directory administrator to enable the service via a Microsoft Graph API call.