Microsoft/Bing Ads benchmarks for Home Services report a CPA and CTR that look efficient on paper, but neither figure tells you how many of those clicks and form fills actually came from a homeowner searching for a plumber, an HVAC repair, or a roofing quote. Lunio's invalid traffic data layer exists to close that gap, showing what share of reported ad performance is reaching real buyers rather than bots, competitors, or scripted form submissions. Find out how much of your Microsoft/Bing Ads budget is being wasted →
Home Services buyers on Microsoft Ads are overwhelmingly bottom-of-funnel: someone searching "emergency plumber near me" or "AC repair" on Bing already knows what they need and is comparing providers, not browsing. That intent, combined with lower advertiser density than Google Ads (only 36% of US advertisers actively run Microsoft Ads versus 80% on Google Ads, per Searchlab.nl's 2026 Microsoft Ads statistics), shapes every metric below.
| Campaign Type | IVT Rate | CPC | CPM | CPA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search | 10.32% (platform-level) | $1.50 (WordStream, Q3 2017) | — | $21.68 (WordStream, Q3 2017) |
| Microsoft Audience Network (MSAN) | 10.32% (platform-level; directionally higher for display/native per Lunio's cross-platform findings) | $0.34 (Searchlab.nl, 2026, cross-vertical) | $3.43 (Searchlab.nl, 2026, cross-vertical) | — |
| Performance Max | 10.32% (platform-level) | — | — | — |
Microsoft Ads skews heavily desktop, with 42% higher desktop market share than mobile, per Statcounter data cited by Searchlab.nl's 2026 Microsoft Ads statistics. For Home Services, this matters because a meaningful share of Bing searches come from homeowners researching repairs from a Windows PC at home rather than a mobile device mid-errand, a pattern that likely contributes to the vertical's historically strong conversion rates on this platform.
No Home Services-specific mobile versus desktop CPC split exists for Microsoft Ads. Directionally, Bing's desktop-heavy audience (68% of desktop users run Windows, versus 78% of mobile users on iOS, per Searchlab.nl's 2026 Microsoft Ads statistics) suggests that most Home Services Search spend prices against a desktop-dominant auction, which likely contributes to why Microsoft Ads CPCs stay structurally lower than Google Ads for this vertical: fewer advertisers are actively bidding into that inventory. CPM remains a secondary metric for Home Services because Microsoft Audience Network spend is a small fraction of most accounts' budgets.
| Metric | Average | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| CTR | 2.55% (WordStream, Q3 2017); directional 2026 range 3.0%–3.8% | A CTR that climbs faster than lead volume on Search can indicate invalid clicks inflating the numerator without adding real demand. |
| CVR | 3.36% (WordStream, Q3 2017); directional 2026 range 3.5%–5.0% | A sudden CVR improvement without a landing page or offer change is worth checking for bot-submitted forms counting as conversions. |
| CPA/CPL | $21.68 (WordStream, Q3 2017), the lowest of any industry in that dataset; directional 2026 range $25–$45 | If invalid clicks and fake form fills inflate the conversion count feeding Target CPA, reported CPA can look stable while the real cost per qualified lead rises. |
ROAS is not included because Home Services conversions are leads, not transactions with a defined revenue value; the meaningful efficiency metric for this vertical is cost per lead combined with lead-to-close rate, calculated outside the ad platform.
These figures lean on two tiers of evidence: WordStream's Q3 2017 Home Services-specific benchmark, which remains the only vertical-specific dataset found anywhere in current search results for this query, and 2026 cross-vertical Microsoft Ads data from Searchlab.nl, used to estimate directional ranges where no current Home Services-specific figure exists. For this combination, the IVT figures above use Microsoft/Bing Ads' platform-level rate and the global cross-industry average from the Lunio 2026 Global Invalid Traffic Report rather than a verified vertical-specific rate. Where a figure is estimated rather than measured, it is labelled as such throughout this page. Calculate how much you're losing →
Home Services budgets on Microsoft Ads concentrate almost entirely in two placements: Search, where high-intent keywords capture homeowners already looking for a provider, and Microsoft Audience Network (MSAN), used mostly for remarketing rather than primary lead generation. Shopping and Video are not covered below because Home Services is a service vertical with no product feed and minimal video inventory on Microsoft Ads.
Search carries Microsoft/Bing Ads' platform-level IVT rate of 10.32%, per Lunio's invalid traffic rates by ad platform research, the only rate available for this combination since no Microsoft/Bing Ads × Home Services figure exists yet. For a local, high-competition vertical like HVAC or plumbing, this exposure comes primarily from competitor-driven invalid traffic: with only 36% of US advertisers actively running Microsoft Ads versus 80% on Google Ads, per Searchlab.nl's 2026 statistics, the pool of Home Services competitors sharing a geographic market on Bing is smaller, meaning a single bad actor consumes a proportionally larger share of a modest daily budget.
Microsoft Audience Network inventory is used far less for Home Services, mostly for remarketing against past site visitors rather than cold lead generation. Lunio's cross-platform research consistently finds display and native placements carry higher IVT exposure than search, and Google's own Display Network IVT rate of 12.02% versus 5.21% on Google Search illustrates the pattern platform-wide; Home Services advertisers running MSAN without excluding it from Search-focused campaigns may be routing part of their budget into less-vetted inventory without realising it.
Performance Max for Microsoft is now available across all markets and is reported to generate 19% more conversions than manually managed campaigns, per Microsoft Advertising's 2026 data cited by Searchlab.nl. Because Performance Max combines search, native, and audience placements under a single automated bidding layer, its placement decisions are opaque to the advertiser, which makes IVT monitoring more important, not less, for Home Services accounts adopting it.
| Country | IVT Rate |
|---|---|
| United States | 8.44% |
| United Kingdom | 7.97% |
| Australia | 7.87% |
| France | 6.63% |
| Germany | 6.34% |
| Canada | 6.29% |
The United States combines the largest Home Services advertiser base on Microsoft Ads with the highest IVT rate among these markets at 8.44%, per Lunio's 2026 Global Invalid Traffic Report, making it the highest-risk market by volume even though it is not the highest by rate. The UK (7.97%) and Australia (7.87%) sit close behind, while Canada (6.29%) and Germany (6.34%) offer relative efficiency for advertisers with flexibility over which markets to prioritise. These figures are platform-wide country averages rather than Home Services-specific splits, so read them as directional risk indicators alongside the vertical and platform figures above; see Lunio's ad fraud data by country for the full breakdown.
For this combination, the calculation below combines two real reference points: Microsoft/Bing Ads' platform-level IVT rate of 10.32%, and the documented finding that lead-generation campaigns, which is what Home Services conversion funnels are, run 32.07% higher IVT than transactional models, both per Lunio's 2026 Global Invalid Traffic Report. Applying that premium to the global cross-industry average of 8.51% produces a directional estimate of roughly 11.2% IVT exposure for a Home Services lead-gen account on Microsoft Ads, higher than the platform-level baseline alone would suggest.
For a Home Services advertiser spending $24,000 a year on Microsoft Ads at an average CPC of $1.60, that works out to roughly 15,000 clicks annually. At an 11.2% IVT rate, approximately 1,680 of those clicks are invalid, wasting close to $2,690 a year in direct spend alone, before accounting for the knock-on cost of fake form fills training Target CPA or Maximize Conversions to bid more aggressively toward the audience segments producing them. A multi-location operator spending $120,000 a year faces a proportionally larger exposure, around $13,440 in direct waste at the same rate.
This pattern isn't theoretical. Funding Circle, a UK lending platform running lead-gen campaigns across Google and Microsoft Ads, reduced its average IVT rate from 16.84% to 3.13% and saved 5.8% of combined Google and Microsoft Ads spend after implementing Lunio, alongside a 10% increase in MQL conversion rate. Culligan Harvey, a home-adjacent lead-gen advertiser selling water treatment systems to homeowners, cut invalid traffic by 54% and increased Lead to Demo conversions by 42% after Lunio identified a local competitor fraudulently clicking its ads, a dynamic directly comparable to competitor-driven invalid traffic in local HVAC, plumbing, and roofing markets.
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Microsoft/Bing Ads benchmarks for Home Services tell you what a typical account pays and converts at, but they say nothing about what share of that spend reached an actual homeowner. The gap between the two is invalid traffic, and for a lead-gen vertical running automated bidding on limited monthly conversions, that gap compounds quietly inside Target CPA rather than showing up as an obvious red flag. Lunio exists to measure that gap directly on your account rather than leaving you to infer it from industry averages.
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The only Home Services-specific figure available is WordStream's $1.50 average CPC, based on Q3 2017 data across 1,242 US accounts. Cross-vertical 2026 trend data and Cloudswitched's UK-specific figure of £1.15 suggest a directional 2026 range of roughly $1.45–$1.80, materially below equivalent Google Ads CPCs for the same vertical.
WordStream's 2017 data put Home Services CTR at 2.55%, with current cross-vertical Microsoft Ads CTR around 4.1%, suggesting a directional 2026 Home Services range of 3.0%–3.8%. A CTR that climbs well above this range without a matching rise in qualified leads or booked jobs is worth investigating as a possible sign of invalid clicks rather than genuine demand.
Invalid traffic inflates the clicks and sometimes the conversions behind a reported CPC, CTR, or CPA, without contributing real leads. For a lead-gen vertical like Home Services, this matters because the same fake form fills or short-duration calls that waste spend directly can also train Target CPA or Maximize Conversions to bid more toward the traffic segments producing them, raising real cost per lead while reported CPA looks stable.
Per Lunio's 2026 Global Invalid Traffic Report, the US carries a platform-wide IVT rate of 8.44%, the highest of the markets with verified country data, followed by the UK at 7.97% and Australia at 7.87%. Germany (6.34%) and France (6.63%) sit lower, so a Home Services advertiser running the same campaign structure across both regions should expect somewhat higher invalid traffic exposure in the US and UK than in continental Europe.