Can advertisers track view-through conversions across Bing Ads and other advertising platforms?

Yes, advertisers can track view-through conversions across Bing Ads and other advertising platforms, but it typically requires setting up cross-platform tracking systems and utilizing certain tools or integrations. Here's how this can be done:

1. Third-Party Tracking Platforms
Cross-Platform Attribution: Tools like Google Analytics, Kochava, Adjust, and Sizmek allow advertisers to track view-through conversions across different platforms, including Bing Ads, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and more. These platforms consolidate conversion data from multiple sources to provide a unified view of the customer journey.

Attribution Modeling: These tools often come with built-in attribution models that help determine which platform (or combination of platforms) played a role in driving conversions. This includes tracking view-through conversions, where a user sees an ad but doesn't click on it immediately, and later converts through another channel or directly.

2. Microsoft Advertising (Bing Ads) Universal Event Tracking (UET)
UET Tag: Bing Ads (Microsoft Advertising) uses the Universal Event Tracking (UET) tag to track conversions on your website, including view-through conversions. The UET tag tracks the actions of users who view an ad but do not click on it, allowing you to see the impact of your ads on conversions over time.

Cross-Platform Tracking: To track view-through conversions across platforms, you would need to use UET in combination with tracking and attribution tools that can bring in data from other advertising platforms, such as Google Ads or social media platforms.

3. Integration with Google Ads
Import Data Across Platforms: If you're running campaigns on both Bing Ads and Google Ads, you can use integrations like Google Ads Import to bring conversion data from one platform to another. While this primarily focuses on click-through conversions, Google Ads and Bing Ads both have capabilities to track view-through conversions via their respective systems, making it possible to manually compare performance.

Google Tag Manager: Google Tag Manager (GTM) can be used to implement and manage conversion tracking tags for both Bing Ads and Google Ads in one central place. This can streamline tracking and allow cross-platform data collection for view-through conversions.

4. Cross-Platform Analytics and Reporting
Custom Reporting: Many advertising platforms (including Bing Ads and Google Ads) offer custom reporting options that allow advertisers to track performance across channels. You can create reports that show the total number of view-through conversions across platforms and get insights into how different channels interact in the consumer's journey.

Data Attribution: Advanced reporting tools often use attribution models like last-click attribution, first-click attribution, or linear attribution to understand the influence of each channel on conversions. This can help you determine which advertising platforms (including Bing Ads and others) are contributing to view-through conversions.

5. Custom Integrations for Multi-Channel Tracking
Custom Tracking Setup: For advanced users, it's possible to set up custom tracking solutions by integrating APIs from multiple advertising platforms (Bing Ads, Google Ads, Facebook, etc.). With custom integrations, advertisers can pull view-through conversion data from each platform and aggregate it into a single dashboard.

Attribution Services: Companies that specialize in multi-channel attribution, like Rocket Fuel or Marin Software, offer solutions that aggregate data from multiple advertising sources and analyze how view-through conversions contribute to overall ROI.

6. Cross-Channel Conversion Tracking for Holistic Campaign Analysis
Unified Reporting: By using a unified reporting dashboard (like Google Data Studio, Power BI, or third-party reporting tools), advertisers can compare and contrast the performance of view-through conversions across different platforms, helping them make better budget allocation decisions.

Conversion Lift Studies: Some platforms, including Bing Ads, offer tools like Conversion Lift Studies to measure the overall impact of your ads, including how ads across multiple platforms contribute to brand recall and view-through conversions.

7. Challenges in Cross-Platform Tracking
Cookies and Privacy Restrictions: With increasing privacy regulations (like GDPR, CCPA, and others), cross-platform tracking may be limited due to user consent restrictions or cookie blocking. This can make it harder to track view-through conversions across different platforms unless users have given explicit consent.

Data Privacy Concerns: It's important to ensure that all tracking is done in compliance with data privacy laws. Using cookies to track users across platforms without their consent can lead to legal and ethical issues.

8. Multi-Touch Attribution Models
Cross-Channel Multi-Touch Attribution: Implementing multi-touch attribution models helps understand how multiple touchpoints (including view-through impressions) across various advertising platforms contribute to conversions. This is especially useful when users engage with multiple ads before converting.

Conclusion
While Bing Ads alone can track view-through conversions, tracking across multiple platforms requires either using third-party attribution tools or integrating data from other advertising platforms (e.g., Google Ads, Facebook Ads) into a unified tracking system. This cross-platform tracking gives advertisers a holistic view of their campaigns and allows them to optimize their marketing efforts more effectively.