Lifetimely: How to Connect Microsoft Ads

At a glance

Connect Microsoft Ads (Bing) to Lifetimely to pull your marketing costs in automatically, so your spend flows into your Profit & Loss, CAC, ROAS, and contribution margin reporting.

What this enables

• Your Microsoft Ads spend feeds automatically into your Income Statement, CAC, ROAS, and contribution margin calculations — no manual entry.
• Ask the Profit Agent questions that put ad spend next to profit, like "What was my true ROAS on Microsoft Ads last month after costs?"

What you'll need

• A Microsoft Ads account with access to authorise it.
• Admin access to your Lifetimely account.

There's nothing to copy or paste — you'll authorise the connection directly with Microsoft during setup.

Setup

1. In Lifetimely, go to App Integrations and select Microsoft Ads (or go directly to https://lifetimely.useamp.com/integrations/microsoft-ads ).
2. Click Connect. You'll be taken to Microsoft to sign in and authorise the connection.
3. Approve access. You'll be returned to Lifetimely and the connection completes automatically.

Once connected, your Microsoft Ads spend begins importing automatically. The first import can take from a few minutes up to a few hours.

Common error messages and how to solve them

"AADSTS650052" — access blocked when signing in to Microsoft This message comes from Microsoft's sign-in service, not from Lifetimely. It means your organisation's Microsoft (Azure AD / Entra) tenant hasn't granted consent to the Microsoft Advertising API, so Microsoft blocks the connection before it reaches Lifetimely.

To fix it, your IT admin needs to grant consent to the Microsoft Advertising API — for example, in the Azure Portal → Entra ID → Enterprise Applications, approve the Microsoft Advertising API when prompted. (Advanced alternative: an admin can create the missing service principal by running az ad sp create --id d42ffc93-c136-491d-b4fd-6f18168c68fd .) Once that's done, retry the connection in Lifetimely.

Alternatively, connect using a Microsoft account that manages your Microsoft Ads but isn't part of your corporate tenant.

"You must use a work account to sign in to Bing Ads" You're signing in with a personal Microsoft account. The Microsoft Ads API only works with a work/business Microsoft account. Reconnect using the work account that has access to your Microsoft Ads.

Notes

• Lifetimely only reads your marketing cost data from Microsoft Ads — it never changes anything in your ad account.
• If you run ad platforms Lifetimely doesn't natively support, you can still add that spend manually using Custom Costs under Costs & Expenses.
• Disconnecting Microsoft Ads stops the sync and removes the imported cost data from Lifetimely.
• For how often data refreshes after the first import, see How Often Does My Integration Data Sync?
• See also: What Marketing Channels Can Be Integrated?