Six conversion events.
Every Bing Ads click traced to outcome.
The client was running Bing Ads campaigns with no conversion tracking in place — clicks, checkouts, brochure downloads, and purchase completions were completely invisible to the ad platform. We installed the Microsoft UET base tag via GTM, configured six conversion events with dedicated triggers, set up UET goals in Bing Ads, and built three Looker Studio dashboards covering conversion performance, ad campaign efficiency, and ROI analysis.
Bing Ads spend with no conversion tracking. Budget allocated by instinct, not data.
"Checkout completions, brochure downloads, hotel clicks, and purchase events were happening every day. Bing Ads couldn't see any of it — so it was optimising toward clicks instead of the actions that actually matter to the business."
Microsoft UET not installed — zero Bing Ads conversion visibility
The Microsoft UET base tag was missing entirely from the website. Bing Ads had no way to receive conversion signals — checkouts, purchases, registration clicks, brochure views, and catalog interactions were all happening with no data flowing back to the ad platform. Campaign performance reports showed clicks and impressions only, with no conversion column populated.
Ad platform optimising toward clicks, not conversions
Without UET conversion goals configured in Bing Ads, automated bidding had nothing meaningful to optimise toward. Smart bidding strategies like Target CPA and Maximise Conversions require conversion signals to function — without them, the platform defaults to click-based optimisation, which maximises traffic volume but has no relationship to the actions that actually generate revenue.
No way to measure ROI — spend vs outcome was unknown
The marketing team had no data to answer the most basic question in paid advertising: is this campaign generating more revenue than it costs? Without conversion events tied to purchases and checkouts, every budget decision was based on click volume and CPC benchmarks. There was no ROI figure, no cost-per-acquisition, and no way to justify or adjust Bing Ads spend with confidence.
No engagement signal on high-intent mid-funnel actions
Hotel and activity clicks, brochure downloads, and catalog views are strong signals of purchase intent — they represent users who are actively evaluating the product. None of these interactions were tracked, so there was no way to identify which campaigns were reaching high-intent users, no way to build remarketing audiences from engaged visitors, and no data to inform campaign creative or landing page decisions.
Six conversion events — checkout to purchase, engagement to transaction.
| Event name | GTM trigger type | Purpose and UET goal type |
|---|---|---|
| checkout_event | Page View — checkout confirmation URL | Measures users who successfully initiate or complete the checkout process · UET: Checkout |
| purchase_completed | Page View or dataLayer push — order confirmation | Tracks completed transactions — the primary revenue conversion · UET: Purchase |
| click_hotel_activity | Click Trigger — hotel and activity listing links | Tracks high-intent engagement with specific offerings · UET: Custom — Click Hotel and Activity |
| click_register | Click Trigger — registration button | Captures user intent to register for events or services · UET: Custom — Click Register |
| click_view_brochure | Click Trigger — brochure download / view link | Measures content engagement as a mid-funnel intent signal · UET: Custom — Click View Brochure |
| full_catalog_click | Click Trigger — catalog explore button | Tracks users exploring the full product/service catalog · UET: Custom — Full Catalog Click |
All six events are mapped to dedicated UET goals in Bing Ads — giving the ad platform distinct conversion types to report on, and giving the team clarity between high-intent engagement events and revenue-generating transactions.
UET base tag, event tags, GTM triggers, Bing Ads goals — fully deployed in three phases.
UET Base Tag via GTM
Microsoft UET base tag deployed as a GTM Custom HTML tag firing on All Pages. This establishes the UET pixel on every page before any event tags fire.
GTM Triggers Configured
Page View triggers for checkout and purchase confirmation URLs. Click Triggers for hotel/activity links, register button, brochure link, and catalog button — using CSS selector or data-attribute matching.
UET Event Tags Built
Six Custom HTML tags in GTM — each fires the UET event JS with the correct event_category and event_action for that conversion type. Each tag linked to its corresponding trigger.
UET Goals in Bing Ads
Six UET conversion goals created in Bing Ads — one per tracked event. Checkout and Purchase set as primary conversions. Engagement events (hotel click, brochure, catalog) set as secondary conversions for audience building.
Looker Studio Dashboards
Three dashboards built in Looker Studio — connecting to Bing Ads data to surface conversion performance, campaign attribution, and ROI analysis with real conversion numbers.
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01
→ Phase 1 — GTM configuration
Base tag first, event tags second — correct firing order on every page.
The UET base tag must load before any event-specific UET calls can fire. It was deployed as a Custom HTML tag in GTM using the standard Microsoft UET snippet, set to fire on the All Pages trigger. Sequencing was enforced using GTM's Tag Sequencing setting — the base tag fires as a setup tag before any of the six event tags, guaranteeing the UET pixel is always initialised before an event payload is sent. Preview mode was used to validate firing on correct pages and clicks before publishing.
- UET base tag — Custom HTML, All Pages trigger, fires before event tags
- Checkout event — Page View trigger on /checkout/confirmation URL pattern
- Purchase event — Page View or dataLayer trigger on order confirmation screen
- Click Hotel & Activity — Click Trigger, CSS selector targeting listing links
- Click Register — Click Trigger on registration button element
- Click View Brochure — Click Trigger on brochure download/view link
- Full Catalog Click — Click Trigger on catalog explore CTA
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02
→ Phase 2 — Bing Ads UET goal configuration
Six goals in Bing Ads — primary conversions and secondary engagement signals separated.
In Microsoft Advertising, a UET goal was created for each of the six tracked events. Checkout and Purchase were configured as primary conversion goals — these feed into CPA bidding and the main conversion column in campaign reports. The four engagement events (hotel/activity click, register click, brochure view, catalog click) were set as secondary conversion goals — they populate separate columns and are used for audience building (remarketing lists of engaged visitors) without polluting the primary CPA metric. The UET Tag Helper browser extension was used to verify that each event was being received correctly by Microsoft Advertising.
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03
→ Phase 3 — Looker Studio reporting
Three dashboards — conversions, campaign performance, and ROI — built on live Bing Ads data.
Looker Studio was connected to the Bing Ads account using the native Microsoft Advertising connector. With conversion goals now populating in the account, the full range of conversion metrics — conversions, conversion rate, cost per conversion, revenue (where configured) — became available as Looker Studio dimensions and metrics. Three dashboards were built to serve the marketing team's core reporting needs: daily conversion performance, campaign-level attribution analysis, and ROI tracking comparing ad spend against conversion value.
GTM owns all tracking configuration.
Every UET tag, trigger, and variable lives in GTM. The UET base tag and all six event tags are managed here — changes to tracking logic are deployed through GTM without touching the website codebase. Preview mode validates every change before it goes live.
Microsoft UET + Bing Ads own conversion data.
UET receives all six events and routes them to the corresponding Bing Ads goals. The ad platform now has real conversion signals — Checkout and Purchase feed into smart bidding. Engaged visitors (brochure viewers, catalog clickers) are automatically added to remarketing audiences for retargeting campaigns.
Looker Studio owns the dashboards.
Three dashboards connect directly to the Bing Ads account via the native Looker Studio connector. Conversion counts, cost per conversion, and ROI are available in real time. No manual exports, no spreadsheets — stakeholders access live dashboards through a shared link.
Three dashboards — conversion performance, campaign attribution, and ROI.
Every conversion event counted, trended, and broken down by type.
The conversion performance dashboard gives the team a single view of all six tracked events — daily and cumulative counts, conversion rates from click to conversion, and breakdown by event type (transaction vs engagement). It answers the operational questions the team couldn't answer before: how many checkouts this week, how many purchases, how many hotel and activity clicks from Bing Ads traffic?
With primary and secondary conversions separated, the team can immediately distinguish between users completing purchases (revenue) and users showing strong purchase intent (engagement) — and act on each group differently through retargeting and campaign optimisation.
- Daily and cumulative counts for all 6 events — filterable by date range
- Primary conversion rate: clicks → checkout → purchase
- Secondary engagement: hotel clicks + brochure + catalog + register
- Conversion trend — day over day and week over week comparison
- Event distribution — which conversion type has the highest volume
- Conversion by campaign — which campaigns drive the most events
- Spend, impressions, clicks, CTR, CPC by campaign and ad group
- Conversions and conversion rate per campaign
- Cost per conversion (CPA) — by campaign, ad group, and keyword
- Top-converting campaigns vs highest-spend campaigns
- Engagement event volume by campaign — hotel clicks, brochure, catalog
- Period-over-period campaign performance comparison
Which campaigns are actually driving conversions — not just clicks.
The campaign performance dashboard replaces click-volume reporting with conversion-first analysis. Now that UET goals are populating in Bing Ads, every campaign has a conversion column — and the team can see exactly which campaigns are generating checkouts and purchases versus which are generating high click volume with no downstream conversion.
Cost per acquisition is now a real number derived from actual conversion data, not an estimate. Budget reallocation decisions — moving spend from low-converting to high-converting campaigns — are now backed by attribution data instead of guesswork.
ROI Analysis — Ad Spend vs Conversion Value
The ROI dashboard closes the loop between Bing Ads spend and business outcome — comparing total ad spend against conversion volume and estimated revenue to produce a true return-on-ad-spend figure for the channel.
- Total Bing Ads spend vs total conversions — cost per acquisition over time
- Revenue vs spend (where purchase value is passed via UET) — ROAS calculation
- Spend efficiency trend — is CPA improving or deteriorating month over month?
- Campaign-level ROI — which campaigns have the best and worst return
- Lead quality proxy — ratio of engagement events to purchase events per campaign
- Budget pacing — actual spend vs planned budget with conversion forecast
GTM, Microsoft UET, Bing Ads, Looker Studio — and optionally Microsoft Clarity.
Google Tag Manager
GTM deploys and manages the UET base tag and all six event tags without requiring code deployments. Tag Sequencing ensures the base pixel always loads before event payloads fire. Preview mode validates every change before it reaches production. All tracking logic lives in GTM — not in the website codebase.
Microsoft UET
Universal Event Tracking is Microsoft's conversion pixel — the equivalent of Meta Pixel or Google's gtag. The UET base tag fires on every page; event-specific UET calls fire on the six defined conversion triggers. UET routes conversion signals to Bing Ads goals and simultaneously builds remarketing audiences from engaged visitors for retargeting campaigns.
Microsoft Advertising (Bing Ads)
Six UET goals configured in the Bing Ads account — Checkout and Purchase as primary conversions feeding smart bidding, engagement events as secondary conversions. With real conversion data now flowing, automated bidding strategies (Target CPA, Maximise Conversions) have accurate signals to optimise toward, replacing click-volume optimisation.
Looker Studio
Three dashboards connect to the Bing Ads account via the native Microsoft Advertising Looker Studio connector. Conversion metrics — counts, rates, cost per conversion, ROAS — surface as report dimensions and metrics. Stakeholders access live dashboards via shared link. No data exports, no scheduled spreadsheet pulls, no stale numbers.
Bing Ads budget spent with no conversion data. Campaigns optimised toward clicks instead of revenue.
We install Microsoft UET via GTM, configure conversion goals in Bing Ads, and build the dashboards that show you exactly which campaigns are driving real outcomes — not just traffic.
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