Jyll Saskin Gales (00:00)
This is PPC Zone, April 2026, e-commerce expansion. I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. I use the pronouns she and her. I'm a Google Ads coach, ex-Googler, and the founder of the Inside Google Ads course, podcast, and book. I created PPC Zone in 2022 to elevate new perspectives and insights in our industry.
PPC Zone is proudly sponsored by UserCentrics, TwoTrees PPC, and Optmyzr.
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Our final speaker in the zone today
has been at Jumpfly since 2005 and is the VP of Search managing a team of 24. She manages B2B and B2C clients across all industries. And now she's here on the PPC Zone stage to tell us about low effort, high impact. Quick Microsoft wins, most advertisers miss. I also want to recognize that this amazing speaker was supposed to join us on PPC Zone
all the way back in 2022. Unfortunately, I had to cancel that event last minute for personal reasons. So we are long overdue to be graced with her brilliance on the PPC Zone stage. Please welcome the one and only Nikki Kuhlman. Thank you, Jyll. That was an amazing introduction. So yes, I'm Nikki Kuhlman. I'm the VP of Search at Jumply. ⁓ Besides being at Jumply for 21 years,
and doing paid search for more than 24, I'm also a member of the Paid Search Association Board, which if you haven't joined, I highly recommend. It's free, it's a great community. But now today, I'm here to talk about fast, easy optimizations you can implement right now and see immediate improvements on Microsoft. So, Microsoft, also known as the forgotten platform. So many times, Microsoft ads are treated as an app.
For many companies, budget is at a premium, and it's harder to justify additional budget on Microsoft when it doesn't appear to perform as well. Today isn't about massive rebuilds. It's about the low-lift changes to make your budget work harder. I do most of the Microsoft audits at JumpFly, and I see the same mistakes over and over. Agencies import their Google campaigns and make no changes at all to update for the Microsoft platform. They ignore the account completely, or they take the easy way out and set up
Google Scheduled Imports, treating them like the same platforms. And then they turn around and say Microsoft doesn't work and turn off the campaigns. So we're going to change that. The suggestions I'm going to share today are best done when you launch a new campaign, but they will still work on any existing campaigns you're running right now. Now, this is not to say Microsoft works for absolutely every single account, just like Google. But having done these changes, you're going to be giving the campaigns the best chance of performing as well as they can.
So diving in, how many times have you run out of budget in Microsoft before nine o'clock in the morning? Nighttime is not the right time for Microsoft advertising. Your budgets were set at midnight, and nine times out of 10, you'll waste too much of your budget on clicks without results in those midnight hours. So my best practice number one is I highly recommend turning off your campaigns completely from midnight to the start of morning business hours. So for Pacific, it'd be about 5 a.m., six o'clock for Central, seven o'clock for Eastern time.
or use the user's time zone setting. And this really helps if you're limited by budget. We've seen immediate improvements by not starting campaigns until later in the morning. So you save that money for when there is more intent. If you really want to test overnight, then I recommend testing a negative 50 % bid through those midnight hours, midnight to morning, and then check the data. When you check the data, I also recommend evaluating the time after normal business hours.
usually starting at 6 p.m. through to midnight and prune there as needed. I've had clients with enough budget do well during this time, so it pays to let the data tell you what additional hours to explore.
Moving on to my next tip, mobile on Microsoft does not perform like mobile on Google. A big mistake I see when I do audits is leaving the bid modifier for mobile at zero. So best practice number two, I highly recommend starting campaigns with a negative 20 % bid modifier and then review results regularly. When reviewing, evaluate the campaigns individually. Just like mobile can work for one client and not for another, it can also do well on one campaign and not another even in the same account.
We have multiple clients where we've turned mobile off completely because a lot of audience network spend can come from mobile. So turning it off can improve results. Also watch tablet. It tends to perform more like desktop, but I've had more than one client who saw a sudden massive spike in tablet spend. In fact, the Jumpfly Microsoft account had it happen in December where more than 90 % of spend shifted to tablet from desktop. And I caught it because conversions dropped off.
I ended up turning tablet off completely and conversions came back. I also have mobile off completely for this account because almost all my audience networks time is going to mobile devices.
Best practice number three is leaning into smart bidding on Microsoft. And yes, I know it's hard because you probably have a lot less conversions in Microsoft than you do in Google, or below the threshold of what's recommended to be enough conversions. But it's an important tool in getting better results from Microsoft. You just need to do it step by step. So when you start a campaign, start it on ECPC in order to gain data. Then switch to maximize conversions or maximize conversion value. Even if you only have
10 conversions in 30 days. And then as soon as you're out of learning, add a target ROAS or target CPA goal. And one thing I love about Microsoft is the ability to add a maximum CPC for the campaigns when you use max conversions or max conversion value bid strategies without having to create a portfolio bid strategy like you do in Google. If you're seeing campaigns that are doing OK, but you're spiking CPCs and you can't get to your goal, add a maximum CPC.
This can really help in campaigns where you're struggling to hit your targeted goal. You're telling the system that while you want conversions, there is a limit to how much you're willing to spend on those clicks. And then the next mistake I see is a lack of excluded websites on the account or campaign level. And I'm sure you're thinking, why don't I just exclude search partners immediately? And that's mainly because my experience has shown that search partners, particularly DuckDuckGo, can perform surprisingly well. In fact, for some clients, I would have
the volume of conversions by turning search partners off, especially because CPCs there can be much lower. So instead, for best practice number four, I start with excluding a curated list of partner websites that we've shown are money wasters. This also includes some audience network placements. I've included a link to our exclusion list in my deck. So please review, use it at your own risk. But it has three tabs, a basic list of just over 300 partner websites to exclude right off the bat.
a larger, more comprehensive list of partners to exclude if you're trying to get rid of most but keep duck duck go, and a list of apps to exclude because your ads can now show on apps and those can be a huge waste. And then once the campaign has enough data, I run the website URL publisher list at least monthly or anytime I see a massive spike in a volume of clicks and I keep excluding websites. One note, for us, if we've done all four of the best practices I'm sharing today and audiences are still spending a lot without even
without even view through conversion results, we've been able to go to our Microsoft rep and asked to be opted out of the audience network completely. But we've had to do our due diligence by doing all four of these best practices first before they will let us out. So these four best practices, day partying, mobile bidding, smart bidding, and placement hygiene, can make the difference between saying Microsoft doesn't work and having Microsoft work for you. If you're giving Microsoft 10 to 25 % of your budget,
it shouldn't get 0 % of your attention. Microsoft adds rewards advertisers who treat it as a separate platform from Google and adjust accordingly. So I'm challenging all of you to pick a Microsoft account and do these four best practices. And I'd love to hear what happens. So reach out to me on LinkedIn or via the paid search associations Slack channel. Thank you. Thank you so much, Nikki, for sharing your unique perspective and insights with us in the zone.
If you'd like to connect with Nikki Kuhlman, you can find her on LinkedIn.
Our next event will be in June, 2026. If you would like to apply to speak at an upcoming event, you can do so on our website at ppc.zone. Thank you one more time to our sponsors, Usercentrics, optmyzr, and two trees PPC for supporting our mission to elevate new perspectives and insights in our industry.
You can learn more about Optmyzr at ai.ppc.zone. You can learn more about UserCentrics at consent.ppc.zone. Those are both affiliate links. And you can learn more about TwoTrees PPC at twotreesppc.com. I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. Be sure to follow me on LinkedIn and or subscribe to my YouTube channel so you don't miss future PPC Zone events. I look forward to seeing you next time.
in the zone.