How to set up conversion imports in Microsoft Advertising

First, you need to decide which goals of Matomo you want to export into Microsoft Advertising. Those goals need to be set up in Microsoft Advertising as offline conversions.

Setup offline conversion in Microsoft Advertising

  • Go to your Microsoft Advertising account
  • Create your conversion goal
    • Click the “Tools” icon and choose “Conversion tracking > Conversion goals”
    • Click the “Create conversion goal” button
    • Choose “Offline” as the conversion to track and press next button
    • Select a goal category which suits your conversion best
    • Select the type of interaction as “Offline conversions” and press next button
    • Give the goal a name (This name needs to be used in Matomo later, but does not need to match a goal name in Matomo)
    • Choose an appropriate option for “Revenue”
    • Set the “Scope” of goal along with “Count”, “Conversion window” and “Include in conversion” as per your need and press save and next button.

Once those conversions have been set up you can configure the conversion export in Matomo.

Set up a conversion export in Matomo

  • Go to Matomo Administration > Measurables (or Websites) > Conversion exports
  • Ensure the correct site is selected in the site selector
  • Click “Create new conversion export”
  • Configure the export depending on your requirements
  • For “Number of days to export”:
    • If you want to do the import into Microsoft Advertising on a daily basis we recommend to use 3 days
    • For a weekly import 9 days would be recommended
      Note: Microsoft Advertising will automatically ignore conversions that are imported twice due to the overlapping days, but this way you can be sure no conversion is missed if the import doesn’t work correctly one day.
  • Ensure the goal names you configured exactly match those configured in Microsoft Advertising before.
  • Note: When you save the new export, the Export URL is generated with the access token included in the URL. Copy the Export URL before leaving the page as this URL, with the included access token, is only shown once. If you come back to this conversion export later, the Export URL will still be visible but it will not include the access token.
  • Once the export was saved, go to the overview and click the icon to see the download link.

This unique download link can now be used to set up the offline conversion in Microsoft Advertising.

Setup offline conversion

  • Go to your Microsoft Advertising account
  • Click the “Tools” icon and choose “Conversion tracking > Offline conversions”
  • Click on “Schedules”
  • Click the blue plus icon to add a new scheduled upload
  • Paste the direct download link of the conversion export you have configured in Matomo
  • Choose the Upload frequency(Daily should be sufficient but you can set as per your need).
  • Set the timezone, it should be same as what you have set for the Measurable under your Matomo
  • Click “Save & Preview”
Previous FAQ: How to set up conversion imports in Google Ads