Microsoft Advertising
Read accounts, campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords and their performance.
A Microsoft Advertising connection gives a playbook's functions Microsoft's Advertising MCP server, in its open beta toolset. You sign in with the Microsoft account you use for Microsoft Advertising, and the connection acts as you, for the accounts you can reach.
Available on Auto Cloud and on self-hosted runtimes.
What a playbook can do with Microsoft Advertising
- Read your accounts and their campaigns, ad groups, ads and keywords.
- Read performance: the metrics the server's reporting tools offer, by campaign, ad group, keyword and date.
What the server lets a function change follows the tools Microsoft lists in the beta, and a tool that changes anything is called only by a function whose definition names it.
Microsoft Advertising's MCP server lists its own tools when a function runs, and once you connect, your agent lists them with list_connection_tools.
An example workflow
A Monday comparison of search spend across engines. A schedule trigger runs the workflow at 08:00. A lookup function reads last week's spend, clicks and conversions by campaign from Microsoft Advertising, and a second lookup function reads the same from a Google Ads connection. A computation function joins the two by the campaign names your team keeps in step, and works out cost per conversion for each engine. A reasoning function reads the table with your budget rules in its prompt and writes which campaigns earn their budget on both engines, which only on one, and what it would move. An interaction function sends the note to the paid search lead through a Microsoft Teams connection and waits for a reply before anything else happens; the moving of budgets stays with the person. The run's history in Studio keeps both weeks' rows.
How to connect Microsoft Advertising
- Sign in with the Microsoft account you use for Microsoft Advertising and allow access. The consent screen shows the permissions listed below.
Then:
- Ask your agent to connect Microsoft Advertising to Auto, or open Settings, Agents, Connections in Auto Studio and choose Microsoft Advertising.
- On the Studio page, check the service and its access, choose which playbooks may use the connection, and approve it.
- Have your agent check one small read through the connection before a function depends on it.
What it needs
- A Microsoft account, personal or work, with access to the Microsoft Advertising accounts the playbook reads.
- Your agent connected to Auto and signed in as you, with permission to change your organization, if your agent adds the connection.
- On a self-hosted runtime, an application registered in Microsoft Entra for the runtime, since Microsoft registers no client itself, as Let people add connections sets out.
Microsoft grants Microsoft Advertising as one scope, which covers managing as well as reading; what a function can change is what the server's tools offer.
Permissions Auto asks for
- Manage the Microsoft Advertising accounts of the person who connects.
- Keep access to Microsoft Advertising when nobody is signed in.
Good to know
The server is Microsoft's open beta, so the tools it lists can change between weeks; a function names the tools it uses, and a tool that disappears shows in the run's history as a call that failed, with the reason. What a function reads is kept in that history, where people with access to the playbook can read it.