Microsoft Audience Network

What AdGradr checks

AdGradr detects whether your active Search campaigns include the Microsoft Audience Network (MAN) and flags accounts where it’s enabled. MAN extends your search ads to native and display placements on MSN, Outlook, Microsoft Edge, and partner publisher sites.

The check is informational, not prescriptive. The right answer is “MAN is on AND placement exclusions are actively maintained” or “MAN is fully off.” The wrong answer is “MAN is on and nobody’s looking at where the ads run.”

Why this matters (and why the framing changed)

MAN can be a legitimate channel. Lower-volume verticals routinely close real leads from MAN inventory, including from older-demographic publishers like Publisher’s Clearing House style audiences. The historical advice to “always disable MAN on search campaigns” oversimplified a real revenue channel.

What’s actually risky is placement quality, not MAN itself. Microsoft Audience Network includes high-quality first-party properties (MSN, Outlook, Edge homepage) alongside long-tail partner inventory that varies wildly. Made-for-ads sites, autogen content farms, and mobile gaming apps with accidental clicks all show up in MAN if you don’t actively exclude them.

There’s also a recent practical wrinkle: Microsoft has tightened the ability to fully opt out of MAN on Search campaigns. The on/off switch isn’t always available, and even when it is, placement exclusions are increasingly the primary lever for managing where your ads actually appear.

What good looks like

• A documented decision: MAN is in scope, or MAN is out of scope. Either is fine, as long as someone made the call.
• If MAN is in scope: an active website-exclusion list that gets reviewed at least monthly. Low-quality publishers blocked. Mobile gaming app categories blocked unless mobile gaming is your audience.
• If MAN is out of scope: confirmation in each campaign’s settings that MAN is excluded where Microsoft still allows it.
• Segmented reporting so you know what fraction of your spend is going to MAN vs. mainline Search, and how each performs separately.

Common mistakes

1. Treating MAN as a settings toggle, not an ongoing maintenance task. The on/off decision is the easy part. Maintaining the exclusion list is the work.
2. Empty placement-exclusion list with MAN enabled. This is the actual waste pattern. Healthy MAN-running accounts add several new exclusions per month based on what shows up in placement reports.
3. Reviewing MAN performance only at the campaign level. Segment by network. If MAN converts 80% below Search at 3x the CPA, that’s a different conversation than “the campaign is doing fine.”
4. Assuming MAN traffic is comparable to Search traffic. It’s a lower-intent channel. Different conversion windows, different attribution, different lead quality.

How to fix it

1. Open the campaign in the Microsoft Ads UI. Go to Settings → Ad distribution. See whether MAN is currently in or out for this campaign.
2. Pull a placement report. In the campaign, navigate to Dimensions or Reports and run a “Website URL (publisher)” report for the last 30 days. Sort by spend descending.
3. Identify the bottom of the list. Made-for-ads sites, gaming apps, autogen content. These are the exclusions you need to add.
4. Add to the campaign-level website exclusions list. Settings → Exclusions → Websites. Paste the domains.
5. Calendar a recurring review. Monthly minimum. New low-quality publishers appear in MAN inventory continuously.

When to ignore this check

If you have already evaluated MAN, made a deliberate decision to keep it on for the incremental volume, and your placement exclusions are current, the finding is informational. Note the decision in a campaign-level note and move on.

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