Data reporting
Click quality reports for Bing Ads advertisers
The account performance and campaign performance reports available on the Reports tab of Bing Ads can be enhanced to view click quality information. For more information, see the topic in Bing Ads Help. Several columns related to click quality may be added to this report:
- Low-quality clicks
- Low quality clicks general
- Low quality clicks sophisticated
- Low-quality impressions
- Low-quality click rate
- Low-quality impression rate
- Low-quality click conversions
- Low-quality click conversion rate
The columns allow you to:
- Quantify the percentage of low-quality clicks that are being removed by Bing Ads.
- Compare low-quality click removal in search ads programs.
- View impressions filtering.
- Report conversions that result from low-quality clicks: Bing Ads reports conversions that result from clicks that were removed because of the aggressive Bing Ads filtration program.
Media Rating Council Invalid Traffic (IVT) Reporting Columns
Please note that Bing Ads does not use the standard Media Rating Council Invalid Traffic reporting columns. Refer to the table below for how you can map the click quality reporting columns used in Bing Ads to Media Rating Council Invalid Traffic reporting column equivalent.
MRC IVT Requirement |
Equivalent in Microsoft Reports |
Gross Metrics (Completely Unfiltered) |
Clicks + Low Quality Clicks |
Net Metrics (Filtered for General Invalid Traffic Requirements) |
Clicks + Low Quality Clicks - Sophisticated |
Total Net Metrics (Filtered for general and sophisticated requirements) |
Clicks |
Data that is not reported
Click quality reports do not show defective or test click traffic, because such traffic is free of commercial intent and is not potentially billable.
Click-through rates greater than 100%
Bing Ads reports click traffic in one-hour blocks, so that advertisers can observe patterns of behavior and more effectively target campaigns to particular hours of the day. This click-reporting technique occasionally results in click-through rates of greater than 100%. For example, an impression might occur during “hour 1,” and its corresponding click might occur during “hour 2.” When this happens, the “hour 1” report will contain 1 impression and 0 clicks, and the “hour 2” report will contain 1 click and 0 impressions.
Post-report billing adjustments
Bing Ads makes every effort to eliminate and not bill for low-quality clicks within the hour, so that reports can be posted with all low-quality clicks removed. However, Bing Ads occasionally does not detect low-quality clicks until after the hour's data has been processed.
In these situations, it is no longer possible to go back and ignore the invalid clicks, as it was when the hour’s data was being processed. Instead, Bing Ads issues a billing adjustment in which it credits the charges for clicks that were found to be invalid. These credits are displayed on the billing report as adjustments.
ClickIDs and third-party or in-house reporting for advertisers
Third-party landing page scripts and other in-house web server logs can be used to count clicks. However, by using Bing Ads ClickIDs you can more accurately count the measured clicks by differentiating them from repeated user page views. Note that not all web analytics programs support ClickIDs.
How ClickIDs work
A. The advertiser adds {msclkid} to the destination URLs for your ad.
- Click the Campaigns tab.
- In the Campaign list, click a campaign that contains ads for which you want to enable ClickIDs.
- On the Campaign selected page, click an ad group that contains ads for which you want to enable ClickIDs.
- On the Ad group selected page, click the Ads tab.
- Under Ad title, click the ad for which you want to enable ClickIDs.
- In the Destination URL box, at the end of the URL, type the following: /?msclkid={msclkid}
For example: www.contoso.com/?msclkid={msclkid}
Notes
If your destination URL contains dynamic text, such as {param1}, be sure to include the forward slash in the /?msclkid={msclkid} code snippet.
If your destination URL contains other dynamic URL parameters, you can place the /?msclkid={msclkid} code snippet anywhere in the parameter string by using the & operator.
- Click Save.
B. Bing Ads creates, logs, and passes on the ClickID.
When a search user clicks your ad, the user is sent to the Bing Ads redirection server. The redirection server then creates a ClickID. The redirection server looks for the {msclkid} parameter in the advertiser’s destination URL (for example, www.contoso.com/?msclkid={msclkid}). If the parameter is present, {msclkid} is replaced with the internally generated ClickID. The redirection server logs the ClickID to the Bing Ads click log, and then sends the user to the destination page with the appended ClickID.
C. The advertiser’s web server log displays the ClickID.
The advertiser’s web server log receives the request and then logs it along with the embedded ClickID. A typical entry might look like the following example: 131.107.0.73 - - [07/Aug/2008:04:10:38 -0400] "GET /?msclkid=cdd4afcccb1c9a4cad9544dd7e5006d5 HTTP/1.0" 200 4674 "http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=data+mining+case+studies&form=QBRE" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.2; MS-RTC LM 8)"
D. The advertiser counts the unique ClickIDs.
To calculate traffic referred from Bing Ads, count only the unique ClickIDs. For example, the web server log might display the following ClickIDs:
- cdd4afcccb1c9a4cad9544dd7e5006d5
- eef3afcccb1c9a4cad9544dd7e5006d5
- cdd4afcccb1c9a4cad9544dd7e5006d5
In this example, the first and third ClickIDs are the same, so you should record a total count of two clicks.
Microsoft Advertising pubCenter reports
There are no click quality fields for publishers in pubCenter reports. Microsoft Advertising pubCenter reports do not include low-quality click counts, but they do include low-quality impressions. Please be aware of this difference when reviewing pubCenter reports.
How to monitor your account for suspicious activity
Best practices for campaign monitoring include the following:
- Advertisers and advertiser agents are encouraged to monitor traffic and report suspected cases of low-quality or invalid clicks to the Bing Ads Traffic Quality Support team.
- Advertisers should use the Bing Ads Click Quality Report to identify how many clicks and impressions are currently being flagged as low-quality through the Bing Ads internal click-quality assessment systems. Even when Bing Ads flags a click as invalid and doesn’t bill for it, the invalid click might still be recorded in the advertiser’s web server log. For example, if the advertiser determines that 15% of the clicks look invalid, the Click Quality Report might show that 20% of the clicks have already been filtered. If that is the case, it is likely that the invalid clicks have already been addressed by Bing Ads systems.
- Keyword reports by time period often provide useful pictures of account activity. Spikes or other unusual changes in traffic are often visible when you use this kind of report.
- After you identify an unusual change in traffic, it is a good idea to explore some common causes of these changes before raising the issue to Bing Ads. A variety of reasons could explain these changes. For example, a large spike in clicks might occur because of:
- New keywords recently added to the campaign
- Sales or other price changes
- Articles that appear on Yahoo, AOL and Bing Network Properties.
- News stories and current events
- Movement from sidebar to mainline position in the search results. Mainline ad positions are known to generate much more traffic than sidebar positions. This change might occur because of the loss of a competitor, or it might occur because of changes to the Bing Ads internal ranking algorithms.
- Changes in keyword bidding
- Seasonal fluctuations in search activity
- If none of these explanations can account for the change in traffic, Bing Ads strongly recommends that you report the issue to our Support team.
- The Support team will try to determine the reason for the unusual click traffic and will recommend reimbursement if the traffic is found to be invalid.
How to report a traffic quality issue or a published error correction
To report a traffic quality issue, contact Bing Ads Support.
Please provide the following information, as appropriate:
- Note that it is a Traffic Quality, Click Quality, or Invalid Click issue so that it can be quickly routed to the appropriate Support team.
- Affected campaign.
- Affected ad group and ad group number.
- Affected ad ID and keywords.
- Date range of the issue.
- A brief description of the trends in your Bing Ads reports or web server logs that prompt you to suspect invalid click activity.
- Web server logs.
For best results, be sure to file the ticket within 30 days of the occurrence of the issue. When contacting Support, you might be asked for a sample of your web server log file. Please have that information available.
Communication of known reporting issues
Please visit status.bingads.com for information on known system issues affecting the accuracy of reported clicks.
Limitations on investigations
Click measurement records are retained for at least 11 months. The Bing Ads investigation process is confidential, and Bing Ads is under no obligation to disclose proprietary information during the process. Bing Ads will not pursue click-quality investigations after 60 days from the occurrence of the issue. If the issue is submitted to Bing Ads Support within 60 days, accompanied by the information requested above, Bing Ads will investigate the case to the best of its ability.
How quickly will the investigation team get back to me?
If all of the requested information has been provided, the ticket has been properly routed to our Support team, and the issue occurred within the last 60 days, Bing Ads will try to complete the investigation within nine days. In rare cases, because of the need to thoroughly investigate the circumstances of the issue, the investigation might take longer.
Back to top