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The First “P” in PPC: What You Need to Know About Paying for Bing Ads

With lots of attention on clicks, impressions, and quality score, it’s worth taking a little time to talk about the nuts and bolts of paying for search advertising. It’s not an exciting topic, but if you want your ads to serve smoothly, you should know some things about paying for Bing Ads and keeping your account active.

How you pay for Bing Ads

“Payment method” is Bing Ads’ lingo to describe how you pay for clicks. Credit cards, debit cards, PayPal, wire transfers, personal checks, coupons—we offer you lots of different ways to pay for PPC services. In Bing Ads, you can add multiple payment methods and change which payment method is being used for each of your accounts.

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No Payment Method, No Ads

I'm reluctant to state the obvious, but you need to have a valid payment method for your ads to be running. Search advertising is a game of bidding, and to play the game you need a way to pay now (prepay) or pay later (postpay). There are a number of valid payment methods (see table below), but the most common one is a credit card. We quickly validate credit cards by posting (but not charging) a small amount (less than $1) to your card. Keep in mind that your Bing Ads account can be put on hold for any of the typical credit card problems:

  • Expiration
  • Cancellation because of loss or theft
  • Exceeding your credit limit
  • Hold placed for potentially fraudulent activity

Other payment methods, such as a bank wire transfer or check, can take a few days. During this time, you can create and edit campaigns, but your ads can’t run until we receive your funds and deposit them to your account.

How do you know that your payment method is valid and everything is hunky-dory with the account? Your payment method is “set” and marked as “primary,” your status is “active,” and your financial status is “no hold.”

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Prepay vs. Postpay

When you create an account, you permanently select currency and the account’s payment setting:

  1. Prepay: Put money in your Bing Ads account and then as your ads are clicked, the CPC is deducted from your account. You control when and how much money goes into your account, so if you have a tight budget prepay might be a good option. If you are prepaying with a card and want to avoid interruptions in your campaigns when you run out of money, you can sign up for auto-recharge. With this feature, when your account has 10% of the funds remaining, we add money to your account. The advantage with auto-recharge is that your card is charged the same amount each time and just in time.

  2. Postpay: Automatically pay your balance monthly, either on your monthly billing date or when you reach your threshold limit, whichever comes first. Postpay might be the way to go if you have a bigger budget and want to keep your campaign running full steam. Just keep in mind that because thresholds can increase over time and because postpay account balances will vary with campaign activity, payment scheduling and amounts will vary.

Tip: If you want to change from a prepay account to a postpay account, you can set up a new postpay account, export your campaigns from your existing prepay account, and import them into your new postpay account. This process works the same going from postpay to prepay.

Monthly Invoice Billing- An Alternative Payment Option

If you meet a certain spending threshold, you might qualify for a monthly billing invoice. To find out more about this payment option and whether you qualify, contact Support.

Coupons and Promotion Codes

If you have a coupon, lucky you! If the coupon has not expired, you can use it right away to fund any prepay account or to fund a postpay account that has a valid payment method.

What is Lastschriftverfahren??

If you don’t do any banking in Germany, you probably don’t know what this is. So why am I mentioning it? Because we are adding new payment methods that are country and currency specific, and you will see them listed as options. Lastschriftverfahren is a type of prepay account designed for advertisers with German bank accounts. It is the first in a series of prepay payment methods planned for specific countries.

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Summary

Here’s an overview of the payment methods you can use with postpay and prepay accounts and any restrictions.  For specific how-to steps, check out Add a credit card or other payment method.

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Thank you for reading, and I look forward to any questions or comments you may have!

Lisa