Your Microsoft/Bing Ads dashboard reports a tidy CPC and CTR for your e-commerce retail campaigns, but those numbers include every invalid click that slipped past the platform's own filters before it ever reached a real buyer. Lunio's invalid traffic data layer shows what share of that reported spend is actually working, turning a generic industry average into an account-specific answer. Find out how much of your Microsoft/Bing Ads budget is being wasted →
Retail auctions on Microsoft/Bing Ads run differently from Google's. Lower advertiser density, right-rail ad placements that Google retired from search results in 2016, and a desktop-heavy, higher-income audience base all keep CPCs lower. But that also means total search volume is smaller, so every click, real or invalid, carries more relative weight in your account's reported performance.
| Campaign Type | IVT Rate | CPC |
|---|---|---|
| Search & Shopping (Blended Retail Benchmark) | 4.46% (Lunio, Bing retail accounts, Q4 2025–Q2 2026) | $1.24 (WordStream, Q3 2017) |
| Shopping (Product Listing Ads) | 6.33% (Google Shopping, retail sample, cross-platform proxy) | Not published for Bing |
Microsoft's audience on Bing skews heavily toward desktop, a function of Bing being the default search engine on Windows PCs, and desktop e-commerce shoppers typically convert at higher rates and larger basket sizes than mobile shoppers. No Retail-specific mobile versus desktop CPC split has been published for Microsoft Ads, so advertisers planning budget splits by device are working from structural inference rather than a hard benchmark.
Invalid traffic figures for Microsoft/Bing Ads retail campaigns in this article come from Lunio's analysis of 414 million retail ad clicks across 88 accounts, covering Q4 2025 to Q2 2026, combined with Lunio's platform-level and industry-level benchmarks published in the Lunio 2026 Global Invalid Traffic Report. Cost and engagement figures (CPC, CTR) trace back to WordStream's Bing Ads Benchmarks report, based on 1,242 US accounts surveyed between July and September 2017, the only Retail-specific figures published for this platform, now nearly nine years old. Where no current, vertical-specific figure exists for a metric, such as CPM or ROAS, it has been omitted rather than estimated. Calculate how much you're losing →
Most retail advertisers on Microsoft Advertising run three campaign types: Search (Responsive Search Ads and Dynamic Search Ads), Shopping (Standard Shopping, Smart Shopping, and imported Performance Max), and Microsoft Audience Network (MSAN) placements. Each carries a different invalid traffic profile, and because Smart Shopping automatically blends Search and MSAN inventory in a single campaign, most advertisers can't see which one is actually driving their blended numbers.
Search (Text Ads): No Bing-specific IVT split by campaign type is published, but Microsoft/Bing Ads' overall cross-vertical rate of 10.32%, per Lunio's invalid traffic rates by ad platform, gives a platform-wide ceiling. High-intent branded and product-name search terms are a known target for competitor click activity, since depleting a rival's daily budget on a smaller platform like Bing has an outsized effect compared to doing the same on Google.
Shopping (Product Listing Ads / Smart Shopping / imported Performance Max): Google Shopping's retail IVT rate of 6.33%, per Lunio's retail invalid traffic report, is the closest available reference point for feed-driven Shopping formats, since no Bing-specific figure has been published. That exposure is real at the account level: KURU Footwear's branded Google Shopping campaign carried a 19.85% invalid traffic rate against a 6.48% blended account average across Google and Bing, per the KURU Footwear case study, before Lunio brought it down to 4.38% within 90 days. Smart Shopping's automatic blend of Search and MSAN placements means a retail advertiser running this format on Bing has no placement-level visibility into which side of that blend is contributing the invalid clicks.
Microsoft Audience Network (Display/Native): Display and native inventory is structurally more exposed to invalid traffic than search. Lunio's retail click analysis found Google Display Network's invalid traffic rate for retail accounts more than tripled over nine months, rising from 2.45% to 8.13%, per Lunio's 2026 Global Invalid Traffic Report, a reasonable structural proxy for how MSAN's lower-scrutiny publisher inventory behaves inside Smart Shopping. Bot visits to product pages also feed MSAN retargeting pools, so this exposure compounds: the same invalid click that wastes initial budget can trigger follow-up retargeting spend against a non-human visitor.
| Country | IVT Rate |
|---|---|
| United States | 8.44% |
| United Kingdom | 7.97% |
| Germany | 6.34% |
| France | 6.63% |
| Australia | 7.87% |
| Canada | 6.29% |
The United States combines the highest invalid traffic rate of the six markets (8.44%) with the platform's deepest auction competition, making it the clearest double-risk market for Microsoft/Bing Ads retail spend. The UK sits close behind at 7.97%, while Germany (6.34%) and Canada (6.29%) offer relatively cleaner traffic alongside typically lower auction density. For retail advertisers splitting Microsoft Ads budget across regions, these gaps are wide enough to shift where incremental Q4 budget should actually go. See Lunio's ad fraud data by country for the full regional breakdown.
At the retail-specific 4.46% invalid traffic rate measured by Lunio across Bing retail accounts between Q4 2025 and Q2 2026, a $200,000 annual Microsoft/Bing Ads budget loses roughly $8,920 a year to clicks that never reached a real buyer. For the $150,000 to $300,000 range typical of a mid-size e-commerce brand's Microsoft Ads allocation, that works out to $6,690 to $13,380 annually, and that's before the secondary cost of invalid clicks distorting Maximize Conversions and Maximize Conversion Value bidding. Retailers who use micro-conversions such as add-to-cart or account signup as bidding signals should also weigh the fact that lead-gen-style conversion models see 32.07% higher invalid traffic rates than purely transactional ones, per the Lunio 2026 Global Invalid Traffic Report, a meaningful consideration for any retailer optimizing Smart Shopping toward those signals rather than purchases alone.
This isn't theoretical at scale. Streetwear retailer Represent saw a single Performance Max campaign carry a 23.73% invalid traffic rate during its September to November 2025 peak season, accounting for an estimated £28,826 in wasted spend, per the Represent case study. Once protected, Represent's conversion rate improved from 3.25% to 3.67% and cost per acquisition fell 9.43%, with invalid traffic reduced 38% during the Black Friday period specifically, the exact window most retail advertisers on Microsoft Ads are about to scale into.
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The CPC, CTR, and CPA figures published for Microsoft/Bing Ads retail campaigns are a starting point, not an answer. They tell you what the average advertiser's dashboard showed, not what your budget actually bought, and the gap between those two things is exactly the invalid traffic that Smart Shopping's blended placements and automated bidding never surface on their own. Lunio closes that gap with account-specific data instead of a nine-year-old industry average.
Start your free 14-day traffic audit with Lunio →
Retail CPC on Microsoft/Bing Ads has historically averaged $1.24, per WordStream's Bing Ads Benchmarks report based on data from July to September 2017. No more recent Retail-specific CPC figure has been published for the platform, though Microsoft Advertising's broader 2026 cross-vertical CPC range of $1.50 to $2.80 suggests costs have likely risen since that benchmark was collected.
Retail CTR on Bing has averaged 3.06%, above the platform's all-industry mean of 2.83%. A CTR well above that range deserves scrutiny rather than celebration, since invalid clicks inflate the numerator of a CTR calculation without producing any real engagement, which can also artificially boost Quality Score and push you into bidding more aggressively on contaminated keywords or placements.
Invalid clicks inflate your reported click volume and CTR while depressing your reported conversion rate, since the clicks that never came from a real buyer are still counted in the denominator of every CVR calculation. On Smart Shopping and Performance Max campaigns specifically, those same invalid clicks and phantom micro-conversions also feed Microsoft's automated bidding models, teaching them the wrong lesson about which audiences and placements convert.
The United States carries the highest invalid traffic rate among major Microsoft/Bing Ads markets at 8.44%, followed by the UK at 7.97%. Germany (6.34%), France (6.63%), and Canada (6.29%) run meaningfully cleaner, which matters directly for retail advertisers deciding where incremental Microsoft Ads budget delivers the cleanest return.