Microsoft Advertising

Report March 2026

Submitted

Executive Summary 


Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited, the provider of Microsoft Advertising in the European Union (EU), submits this report outlining its implementation of the commitments under the Code of Conduct on Disinformation for the full calendar year 2025 (“reporting period”). Microsoft is committed to preventing the misuse of advertising services to disseminate or monetize disinformation and to supporting broader efforts to protect the integrity of the information ecosystem. 

Microsoft Advertising serves ads displayed on Bing Search, other Microsoft services, and third‑party properties. The platform connects advertisers, who provide advertising content, and with publishers, who display these advertisements on their services. To mitigate the risk of disinformation, Microsoft Advertising applies distinct policies and enforcement measures to advertisers and publishers, including restrictions on non‑compliant content and placements and actions against parties that fail to comply with applicable requirements.

During the reporting period, Microsoft Advertising continued to apply these policies and enforcement measures, focusing on targeted, policy‑based enforcement supported by transparency and cooperation with relevant stakeholders, consistent with the role of advertising services in the information ecosystem. Microsoft Advertising will continue to evaluate and refine its policies, enforcement processes, and reporting practices in line with the Code’s commitments and evolving risks.

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Commitment 1
Relevant signatories participating in ad placements commit to defund the dissemination of disinformation, and improve the policies and systems which determine the eligibility of content to be monetised, the controls for monetisation and ad placement, and the data to report on the accuracy and effectiveness of controls and services around ad placements.
We signed up to the following measures of this commitment
Measure 1.1 Measure 1.2 Measure 1.3 Measure 1.6
In line with this commitment, did you deploy new implementation measures (e.g. changes to your terms of service, new tools, new policies, etc)?
If yes, list these implementation measures here
Do you plan to put further implementation measures in place in the next 6 months to substantially improve the maturity of the implementation of this commitment?
If yes, which further implementation measures do you plan to put in place in the next 6 months?
Measure 1.1
Relevant Signatories involved in the selling of advertising, inclusive of media platforms, publishers and ad tech companies, will deploy, disclose, and enforce policies with the aims of: - first avoiding the publishing and carriage of harmful Disinformation to protect the integrity of advertising supported businesses - second taking meaningful enforcement and remediation steps to avoid the placement of advertising next to Disinformation content or on sources that repeatedly violate these policies; and - third adopting measures to enable the verification of the landing / destination pages of ads and origin of ad placement.
QRE 1.1.1
Signatories will disclose and outline the policies they develop, deploy, and enforce to meet the goals of Measure 1.1 and will link to relevant public pages in their help centres.
Microsoft Advertising prohibits misinformation and disinformation on its network. To enforce this policy, Microsoft Advertising may use a combination of internal signals and trusted third-party data or information sources to reject, block, or remove ads or sites that contain disinformation or that direct traffic to disinformation content. Enforcement actions may include blocking at the domain level where landing pages or sites violate this policy. Our primary policy is available here.

During the reporting period, Microsoft Advertising enhanced its detection capabilities through continued integration with services provided by the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC), including signals related to Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) domains. MTAC operates as part of Microsoft’s broader threat intelligence structure, alongside the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) and the Digital Crimes Unit, and focuses on identifying foreign malign influence operations and state‑aligned information campaigns. MTAC applies a geopolitical influence‑operations lens to analyse propaganda, coordinated information operations, and state‑backed manipulation campaigns, including cross‑platform narrative efforts and manipulated or deceptive content targeting public opinion.

Microsoft Advertising regularly consumes domain- and web-property-level intelligence informed by MTAC analysis to detect ads and publishers associated with disinformation, misinformation, impersonation, or influence operations. Detection methods are continuously refined to address evolving tactics. Microsoft Advertising prioritises early, preventive enforcement, stopping non-compliant advertising content prior to delivery. As a result, significant enforcement actions occur at or before demand creation, reflecting platform improvements that reduce user exposure to harmful or misleading content at the earliest possible stage.
SLI 1.1.1
Signatories will report, quantitatively, on actions they took to enforce each of the policies mentioned in the qualitative part of this service level indicator, at the Member State or language level. This could include, for instance, actions to remove, to block, or to otherwise restrict advertising on pages and/or domains that disseminate harmful Disinformation.
Microsoft Advertising reports enforcement based on ads and domains blocked prior to delivery.

  • Blocked Ads represent individual advertisements detected and prevented from serving globally due to non-compliance with misinformation and disinformation policies.
  • Blocked Domains represent web domains proactively blocked from the advertising network, including based on MTAC domain intelligence, across all regions.

Because enforcement now occurs upstream before ads reach the impression or page-view stage, exposure-based metrics (e.g., blocked impressions or page views) are no longer reliable or consistently available. This methodology reflects current system design and provides an accurate representation of preventive enforcement activity.
Blocked Ads Blocked Domains
Global 512,442 202
SLI 1.1.2
Please insert the relevant data
Following the methodology developed by the Task-force Subgroup on Ad Scrutiny, this SLI estimates the financial impact of demonetisation by applying an agreed-upon CPM-based conversion factor to publisher page-view data. Microsoft Advertising operates a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising model, under which advertisers are charged when users click on ads rather than based on impressions. To align with the Task-force methodology, Microsoft Advertising therefore estimates monetisation impact using blended CPM values provided by Ebiquity Plc., calculated as (Page Views / 1,000) × CPM. Luxembourg and Liechtenstein are not included in the Ebiquity dataset; Belgium and Austria CPM values are applied as proxies based on economic and market comparability.

As described above, Microsoft Advertising prevents serving ads on web domains that spread disinformation, including those associated with Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI), blocking monetisation on those properties at the earliest point of identification. Publisher page-view data associated with the set of 202 domains blocked during 2025 was used as the basis for this calculation. While prior reports relied on exposure-based metrics that could be reconstructed across the reporting period, the 2025 application of this methodology relies on publisher-side page-view data that was not historically retained for this specific purpose and only became consistently available from 19 August 2025 onward. Accordingly, the amounts below are based on observed data for that period and prorated to support full-year comparability.
Euro value of ads demonetised
Austria 592.20
Belgium 1169.06
Bulgaria 9.89
Croatia 22.61
Cyprus 8.09
Czech Republic 28.68
Denmark 359.91
Estonia 101.66
Finland 296.52
France 2110.38
Germany 7339.71
Greece 18.00
Hungary 440.94
Ireland 1018.51
Italy 14838.64
Latvia 6.05
Lithuania 4.03
Luxembourg 0.35
Malta 2.89
Netherlands 1316.72
Poland 40.29
Portugal 50.47
Romania 297.01
Slovakia 68.91
Slovenia 8.14
Spain 681.92
Sweden 996.86
Iceland 3.02
Liechtenstein 1.01
Norway 419.07
Total EU
Total EEA