Microsoft Advertising Introduces HubSpot CRM Integration

On September 30, 2026, Microsoft Advertising announced the availability of its integration with HubSpot, one of the popular CRM platforms for marketing and sales management.

The integration allows advertisers to use CRM data in Microsoft Advertising campaigns, automatically synchronize audiences, trigger actions after lead acquisition, and evaluate advertising performance not only through clicks and leads, but also through deals created and revenue generated.

The update is particularly relevant to B2B advertisers, where weeks or months may pass between the first advertising interaction and a completed sale.

What Does the Microsoft Advertising and HubSpot Integration Offer?

HubSpot consolidates data about contacts, companies, interactions with sales teams, deal stages, and revenue. Microsoft Advertising, in turn, provides access to advertising inventory across the Microsoft ecosystem, including the Bing search engine and other placements.

Connecting the systems allows advertisers to use CRM data as a source for advertising audiences and connect advertising activity with subsequent stages of the sales process.

The integration covers three main areas.

1. CRM audiences in Microsoft Advertising. Advertisers can build segments based on HubSpot contacts and synchronize them with Microsoft Ads. For example, they can create audiences of qualified leads, existing customers, or users at a particular sales stage.
2. Lead management automation. After acquiring a lead through an advertising campaign, advertisers can trigger actions configured in HubSpot, such as assigning a sales representative, sending an email, or enrolling the contact in a follow-up communication sequence.
3. Advertising attribution through deals and revenue. HubSpot allows advertisers to associate advertising interactions with contacts and deals in the CRM. This enables marketing teams to analyze the contribution of Microsoft Advertising to the sales pipeline and revenue instead of relying only on CPL and the number of submitted forms.

However, revenue reporting in HubSpot should not be confused with automatically sending offline conversions back to Microsoft Advertising. Using CRM events in Smart Bidding algorithms requires separate verification and configuration of conversion tracking.

How to Connect Microsoft Advertising to HubSpot

Connecting the platforms does not require special Microsoft Advertising certification or HubSpot Academy certification. However, the user must have sufficient permissions in both systems.

In HubSpot, Publish access to the Ads tool is required. In Microsoft Advertising, the user needs the Super Admin role for the advertising account being connected.

The connection is configured in HubSpot:

1. Open Settings → Marketing → Ads.
2. Go to the Ad accounts tab.
3. Click Connect account.
4. Select Microsoft Advertising.
5. Sign in with your Microsoft account and grant the required permissions.
6. Select the advertising account you want to connect.

Once authorization is complete, HubSpot will begin displaying campaigns from the connected advertising account. You can then configure advertising interaction tracking, CRM audiences, and automated actions.

Basic account connection is available across different HubSpot plans, including the free plan. However, certain capabilities depend on the subscription. In particular, creating audiences based on contact segments requires an eligible paid plan, while audience management through Workflows is available with Professional and Enterprise subscriptions.

Corporate Microsoft accounts may also require approval from a Microsoft Entra administrator.

It is important to note that HubSpot connects individual Microsoft Advertising accounts. You cannot connect a manager account and all its child advertising accounts in a single operation.

How Microsoft Advertising CRM Audiences Work

One of the most interesting use cases for this integration is creating advertising audiences based on HubSpot data.

Suppose a B2B company uses its CRM to classify prospective customers according to their stage in the marketing and sales funnel:

• Lead: A user has submitted contact information.
• MQL: A lead meets the initial marketing qualification criteria.
• SQL: A lead has been qualified by the sales team.
• Opportunity: A potential deal has been opened for a contact or company.
• Customer: The user or company has become a customer.

In HubSpot, advertisers can create a contact segment based on these statuses and then use it to build a Microsoft Advertising audience.

To do this, go to Marketing → Ads → Create audience, select the Contact segment audience type, and specify the relevant CRM segment and Microsoft Advertising account.

After synchronization, the audience becomes available in the advertising platform for supported targeting methods. As contacts are added to or removed from the HubSpot segment, the corresponding advertising list is updated.

However, Microsoft must match the contacts to available user identifiers within its advertising ecosystem. As a result, the audience size in Microsoft Advertising may be smaller than the number of contacts in the CRM. For practical use of Customer Lists, advertisers must also consider the platform's minimum matched-audience size requirements.

Where Should Audiences Be Managed: HubSpot or Microsoft Advertising?

The two systems serve different functions.

In HubSpot, advertisers determine which contacts belong to a segment. For example, they can include all SQLs, exclude existing customers, or create a separate list of users with open deals.

In Microsoft Advertising, the synchronized audience is used in campaign and ad group settings. This is where advertisers determine how the segment is applied: for targeting, performance observation, or user exclusions, provided the selected campaign type supports the relevant option.

In other words, HubSpot is primarily responsible for the business logic of segmentation, while Microsoft Advertising handles audience application within media buying.

How to Use HubSpot Audiences in Search, Audience Ads, and Performance Max

CRM audience capabilities vary depending on the campaign type and bidding strategy.

Search Campaigns: Retargeting and Bid Adjustments

In Microsoft Advertising Search campaigns, customer lists can be used to target existing CRM contacts, observe their performance, and exclude certain segments.

For example, an advertiser promoting enterprise software may use a separate SQL audience from HubSpot.

When a user searches for relevant keywords, the advertising system can take their membership in this segment into account. In supported bidding configurations, advertisers may also apply audience bid adjustments.

Suppose the base bid for a search query is $5 and a +30% bid adjustment has been applied to a particular CRM audience. In bidding strategies where such modifiers directly affect the base bid, this makes it possible to compete more aggressively for prospective customers who are already familiar with the company.

However, when using Smart Bidding, including Maximize Conversions with Target CPA, manual bid adjustments do not necessarily operate as direct multipliers of the auction bid. In these campaigns, the algorithm determines bids based on predicted conversion probability and other signals.

Therefore, CRM audiences are particularly useful for segmentation, exclusions, and analysis, but should not be viewed as a universal method of manually controlling CPC under automated bidding strategies.

Audience Ads: Reengaging CRM Contacts

Microsoft Audience Ads allow advertisers to reach prospective customers beyond traditional search results.

Here, CRM audiences can be used to reengage users who are already familiar with the company but have not yet made a purchase.

For example, a B2B advertiser can show ads inviting prospects to a product demonstration if those contacts have received a sales proposal but have not yet moved to the next stage of the deal.

Another use case is excluding existing customers from new customer acquisition campaigns.

This allows advertisers to tailor messaging to the stage of the customer relationship rather than relying solely on website behavior.

Performance Max: CRM Data as Audience Signals

Microsoft Advertising Performance Max uses Audience Groups to help the algorithm find promising users.

Unlike conventional restrictive targeting, these groups serve as signals for machine learning. The system may reach users beyond the specified audience if it predicts additional conversions.

CRM segments can potentially be useful for creating these signals, particularly when advertisers have high-quality customer lists.

However, it is important to distinguish between support for audience groups in Performance Max and the direct ability to select a particular audience synchronized from HubSpot. Availability of the latter depends on supported audience types and account settings.

Performance Max also does not support percentage-based bid adjustments for CRM segments in the same way as Search campaigns.

Therefore, the main ways to influence PMax performance remain the configuration of conversion goals, data quality, budgets, and the composition of advertising assets.

Practical Use Cases for B2B Advertisers

The Microsoft Advertising and HubSpot integration offers the greatest value to companies with long sales cycles.

Moving qualified leads toward a purchase. Once a contact becomes an SQL, they can enter a separate advertising audience. Through Search or Audience Ads, advertisers can continue engaging the prospective customer with product demonstrations, consultations, or additional resources.

Supporting open opportunities. Companies with active opportunities can receive specialized advertising messages that support the sales team's work. This approach is particularly common in Account-Based Marketing.

Excluding existing customers. After a deal closes, the CRM contact can be excluded from the initial customer acquisition audience. Instead, the contact may be included in a separate segment for promoting additional products.

Automated follow-up with new leads. When an advertising campaign generates a new prospect, HubSpot can assign a responsible sales representative and trigger a communication sequence. This reduces the delay between an inquiry and the sales team's first contact.

Evaluating advertising campaigns based on revenue. Companies can compare advertising sources not only by CPL, but also by the number of deals created, their value, and closed revenue. For example, a campaign generating more expensive leads may prove more profitable if those leads are more likely to become actual customers.

The last scenario is especially important for B2B companies where the cost of an initial inquiry is a poor reflection of a prospect's actual commercial value.

Early Results and Advertiser Feedback

Microsoft Advertising presented the integration as a way to reduce manual work, accelerate lead follow-up, and improve advertising attribution transparency.

However, as of October 2026, there is not a sufficiently large body of independent public research to confidently assess the impact of this new connection on CPL, CPA, ROAS, or revenue.

Professional discussions, including those on Reddit, have also not yet produced a substantial body of feedback specifically about the September release of the Microsoft Advertising and HubSpot integration.

This is important to consider when evaluating its potential impact.

Automatic CRM audience synchronization can reduce the time required to update lists. Deal reporting provides a more complete view of advertising's commercial results. However, having the integration in place does not, by itself, mean that the advertising platform will begin acquiring higher-quality leads or automatically reduce the cost of a sale.

To evaluate the impact, advertisers need to compare results before and after implementation while accounting for changes in budgets, campaign structure, and the length of the sales cycle.

Affect's Takeaway: From Cost per Lead to Customer Acquisition Cost

The Microsoft Advertising and HubSpot integration is primarily an infrastructure update for companies that use CRM data to manage advertising.

For B2B advertisers, it provides several important capabilities: automatic segment updates, alignment of advertising with sales stages, and more transparent analysis of campaigns' contribution to the sales pipeline and revenue.

The integration is particularly promising for Account-Based Marketing, where advertising is directed at specific companies and participants in the decision-making process. CRM synchronization helps keep audiences current and adapt advertising messages as prospects progress through the funnel.

At the same time, the integration should not be viewed as an independent mechanism for improving Smart Bidding performance. To fully optimize for high-quality leads and revenue, advertisers must separately ensure that conversion data is correctly sent to Microsoft Advertising.

Affect recommends treating the integration primarily as a tool for improving marketing analytics and coordinating advertising with the sales department. Its main measure of success should not be the number of synchronized contacts, but rather improved control over advertising campaigns and the ability to make decisions based on actual business results.

Sources

1. Microsoft Advertising, September 30, 2026: Less Busywork, More Growth: What's New in Microsoft Advertising This September. Microsoft Advertising
2. HubSpot Knowledge Base: Connect Your Microsoft Advertising Account to HubSpot. HubSpot Knowledge Base
3. HubSpot Knowledge Base: Create Ads Audiences in HubSpot. HubSpot Knowledge Base
4. HubSpot Knowledge Base: Connect and Set Up Your Ad Accounts in HubSpot. HubSpot Knowledge Base
5. Microsoft Learn: Performance Max Campaigns. Microsoft Learn