Connect Microsoft Ads to Pace and it reads your Microsoft Ads campaigns and performance data, then adjusts budgets and pauses campaigns as part of pacing. Your Microsoft Ads search campaigns then pace in the same workspace as your Google Ads. One pitfall worth avoiding when adding it: carrying Google Ads budgets straight across treats the two as the same size auction. They aren't: Microsoft's search volume runs well below Google's for the same query, so an identical daily figure usually leaves the account underspending.
Once connected, your Microsoft Ads accounts get everything Pace does for the other platforms: automated budget pacing, dashboards, performance records, branded reports with PDF export, budget alerts, and keyword match-type edits. Connecting and pacing Microsoft Ads are available on the Basic plan and every plan above it, with no separate add-on.
What you'll need
- Owner or admin access to your Pace workspace. A member (read-only) role can't connect accounts.
- A Microsoft account with management (not view-only) access to the Microsoft Ads accounts you want paced.
- About five minutes. There's nothing to set up inside Microsoft Ads first, so just have that Microsoft account ready. Account selection happens during sign-in.
Permissions required: These are two separate permission systems. In Pace, only a workspace owner or admin can connect accounts. In Microsoft Ads, the account you sign in with needs management (not view-only) access to those accounts, because pacing changes budgets and pauses campaigns on your behalf.
Connect from Pace
- Open Linked Accounts in Pace.
- In the tab bar at the top, select Microsoft Ads.
- On the connection card, select Connect Microsoft Ads.
- Pace sends you to Microsoft's sign-in page, a full-page redirect, not a popup. Sign in, pick the Microsoft account that manages the accounts you want, and approve access. Pace then returns you to the Microsoft Ads card automatically.
- On the Microsoft Ads card, open the Unlinked tab, tick the accounts you want Pace to manage, and select Link.
Connecting the platform and linking accounts are two separate steps. Signing in imports nothing on its own — no account is managed until you tick it and select Link.
In Microsoft Ads, a manager account is one account that contains several other ad accounts underneath it. When you sign in, Pace surfaces every ad account you can reach and groups each one under its manager account on the card. For the shared basics behind this flow, see how to connect your first account.
What you'll see when it works
The Microsoft Ads card shows a green Connected badge, along with who connected it and the date it was connected. Below that, a note reads "Secured with OAuth 2.0. Your credentials are encrypted and tokens rotate automatically." The accounts you ticked move from the Unlinked tab to Linked.
To manage the connection later, use the ⋮ menu on the card to Re-authenticate or Disconnect. Re-authenticating sends you back through the same Microsoft account picker.
If it doesn't connect
- No accounts appear, or the wrong ones do. You signed in with a Microsoft account that doesn't manage the accounts you expected. Select Re-authenticate and choose the correct Microsoft account. The picker always appears, so you can switch accounts.
- The connect button is missing, or you see "Access Restricted." Your Pace role is member (read-only). Ask a workspace owner or admin to connect it.
- Microsoft data stops updating. Refresh the connection: open the ⋮ menu on the card and select Re-authenticate, then sign in again.
- Sign-in didn't finish. Pace returns you to Linked Accounts with an error banner and a Try again action that restarts the flow.
For deeper reconnection detail, see managing permissions and re-authentication. To understand how pacing then works across your platforms, see budget pacing across platforms.
How your credentials are kept safe
You never type your Microsoft Ads password into Pace. After you approve on Microsoft's own sign-in screen, Microsoft hands Pace a secure access key that stays on Pace's server: never sent to your browser, never placed in a web address, never written into Pace's activity records, and never logged. Tokens are held separately for each workspace and rotate automatically, and Pace makes every request to Microsoft Ads server-side on your behalf. Pace renews its own access in the background, so you won't have to reconnect on a set schedule.