Microsoft Ads – Avid

Connect Microsoft Advertising (also called Microsoft Ads or Bing Ads) to Avid to pull ad reporting into Insights and push audiences out to Microsoft. Reporting syncs daily, and you push an audience with a Pathway (Avid's tool for sending an audience to a connected platform) whenever you choose. The connection takes about 10 minutes.

Use this article when

You are connecting Microsoft Advertising to Avid for the first time.
You need to reconnect after a token expires, or switch to a different ad account.
You want to push an audience from Avid to Microsoft using a Pathway.
You want to understand why Microsoft accepts email addresses only for audience matching.

Applies to and prerequisites

Requirement	Details
Avid plan	Insights plan or Trial. Pushing audiences through Pathways is not available on the Benchmarks plan.
Avid permission	Access to Settings > Connections. Pushing audiences also requires the Pathways > Edit permission.
Microsoft account	A Microsoft Advertising account with access to the target ad account. Use a work or personal Microsoft account. Do not use a Google-linked Microsoft account.
Time	About 10 minutes for the connection, plus time for the first sync to finish.

Permission matrix

Avid requests this access during the Microsoft sign-in. You do not grant it by hand.

Role (Microsoft)	Required access	What it enables in Avid	Where to verify
A Microsoft Advertising user with access to the target ad account	Account access, approved during sign-in through the `msads.manage` scope	Sync reporting into Insights and create or update an audience in Microsoft	Microsoft Advertising account settings, under account users and access

Connect Microsoft Advertising to Avid

In Avid, open Settings > Connections and select the Systems tab.

You see the Avid Integration Checklist and the Systems and Files tabs.
Select Add System, or choose Advertising in the Avid Integration Checklist.
Find the Microsoft Advertising tile. Search for Microsoft or filter by the Advertising type.

The tile shows the Reporting and Audiences badges. Reporting means ad data flows into Insights. Audiences means the connection can receive Pathway syncs.
Sign in with the right Microsoft account. Use a work or personal Microsoft account that has access to your ad account. Do not use a Google-linked Microsoft account. A Google-linked account causes an identity mismatch and the connection fails.

Select Authenticate on the Microsoft Advertising tile. A Microsoft sign-in window opens.
Sign in with the account that has access to your ad account. Approve access when Microsoft prompts you.

Avid returns you to Settings > Connections.
Choose your ad account.
- One ad account: Avid selects it for you. The connection is named Microsoft Advertising: {your account name}.
- More than one ad account: The connection appears as Microsoft Advertising (unconfigured). Select your account in the Microsoft Advertising Account field, then save.

What you should see: The Microsoft Advertising connection shows your account name. Status moves from Initializing to Syncing to Active as the first sync runs.

Reconnect or change the ad account

If your connection stops working or you need a different account, reconnect from Settings > Connections.

Open Settings > Connections and select the Systems tab.
Open the Microsoft Advertising connection.
Sign in again with a Microsoft account that has access to the same ad account.

If you sign in with an account that lacks access, Avid shows The Microsoft account selected does not have access to {connection name}. Please try again with a different account.

What the connection enables

Reporting in Avid Insights

After you connect, Avid syncs your Microsoft Advertising data into Insights every day. The sync includes campaigns, ad groups, and ads; account, campaign, ad, and ad group performance; audience, age and gender, geographic, and impression reports; and budgets and labels.

Select Sync Now on the connection to refresh the data sooner.

Audiences through Pathways

Push an Avid audience (a saved group of people you can target with ads) to Microsoft as a Customer List (Microsoft's term for an uploaded audience, also called Customer Match).

Go to Pathways > Add a new Pathway.
Select your audience, then choose Microsoft Advertising as the destination.
Select Customer List (Audience) as the destination type, then map the Email field. Email is the only identifier Microsoft accepts. This is a Microsoft limit, not Avid.
Save and run the Pathway. Avid hashes each email address before it leaves Avid, then uploads the audience to Microsoft.

We suggest you create a filter for your Microsoft Advertising Pathways. You can reuse the same filter on future Pathways to keep your audiences consistent.

Attach the list to a campaign yourself. Avid creates and updates the Customer List, but it does not attach the list to a campaign. After the sync completes, open Microsoft Advertising and attach the Customer List to the campaign you want to target.

Test and verify

After connecting: the Microsoft Advertising connection in Settings > Connections shows Active with your account name.
After the first reporting sync: the connection shows Active, and your Microsoft Advertising data appears in Insights.
After the first audience push: open Pathways > Manage Pathways for the sync status and record counts, and confirm the Customer List appears in Microsoft Advertising. Download the Last Sync Successes and Last Sync Failures files to reconcile records.

Troubleshooting

Expand the section below for common connection errors and how to fix them.

Connection errors and fixes

Error message	Cause	Fix
`Something went wrong when connecting to Microsoft Advertising. Please try again.`	The sign-in did not finish, or the session expired during the flow.	Start the connection again from Settings > Connections. Clear your browser cache if the error repeats.
`The authenticated user does not have any Ad Accounts. Please try again.`	The Microsoft account you signed in with has no ad accounts.	Sign in with a Microsoft account that has access to your Microsoft Advertising ad account.
`The Microsoft account selected does not have access to {connection name}. Please try again with a different account.`	On reconnect, the account you chose cannot access the connected ad account.	Sign in with the account that first set up the connection, or one with access to the same ad account.
`Your Microsoft Advertising Account doesn't have sufficient privileges to access a Microsoft Advertising account. Please try again with a different user.`	The signed-in user does not have enough access to the ad account.	Sign in with a Microsoft user that has access to that ad account. Check access in your Microsoft Advertising account settings.

Known limitations

Email only for audience matching. Microsoft accepts only email for a Customer List, never phone, address, or name. This is a Microsoft limit, not Avid.
Audience pushes are on demand. Avid pushes an audience when you run the Pathway. Microsoft also keeps each matched person on the list for about 30 days, so re-run the Pathway periodically to keep your audience current.
Each push replaces the list. Every sync overwrites the Customer List in full. There is no add-only or delete-only mode. This is a Microsoft limit, not Avid.
No match-rate reporting. Microsoft does not return audience match rates to Avid. Check the match rate in Microsoft Advertising.
Avid does not attach lists to campaigns. After a successful push, attach the Customer List to your campaign in Microsoft Advertising.
Sign-in access can expire. If reporting stops or a Pathway fails, reconnect the integration from Settings > Connections.

When to contact support

Contact Avid support if the connection or a Pathway still fails after you try the fixes above, or if a Pathway fails with an error not listed here. Include:

The exact error message text.
The name of the Pathway, if the issue is an audience push.
Your Microsoft Advertising account name and account number.
The email address of the person who set up the connection.
A screenshot of the error or the connection status.

For agency partners

Sign-in scope

Avid requests the msads.manage scope during the Microsoft sign-in. Avid uses it to read reporting and to create or update Customer List audiences for the ad accounts the signed-in user can access.

Email hashing

Before upload, Avid lowercases and trims each email address, then applies SHA-256 hashing. No plain-text email addresses leave Avid. Microsoft requires hashed email for Customer Match.

Reporting data

The daily sync pulls campaigns, ad groups, and ads; account, campaign, ad, and ad group performance reports; audience and age and gender reports; geographic reports; impression performance reports; and budgets and labels.

Customer List behavior

Each sync sends the full current audience and replaces the existing Customer List. There is no append or delete mode. To manage segments separately, create a separate Pathway for each segment. After a push, download the Last Sync Successes and Last Sync Failures files from Pathways > Manage Pathways to see which records Microsoft accepted or rejected.

Multiple ad accounts

Each ad account needs its own Avid connection. To connect another account, run the connection process again and select that account. Each connection is named Microsoft Advertising: {account name} so you can tell them apart in Settings > Connections.

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