44× ROAS on search in 2024. Then automation made it scale.
Search and Performance Max on Microsoft Advertising · figures documented by Microsoft Advertising, 2024
Service line: Microsoft Advertising through APH — always-on search and Performance Max, a full-funnel build run as Microsoft Advertising Channel Partner.
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Two engines, one setting. Search proved what the category could return; automation was then pointed at the same strict target.Key results · as documented by Microsoft Advertising
44×ROAS on always-on search2024, always-on campaignsReturn per 1× of spend, priority international markets
33×ROAS on Performance MaxWithin five months of the July 2024 launchReturn per 1× of spend, same ROAS targets as search
5Months to 33× on Performance MaxJuly to December 2024Time from launch to the documented multiple
150+Destinations served by the airline54 countries, 2024Client footprint, the scale the plan had to cover
At a glance
Client
Pegasus Airlines Airline · brand side
Sector
Travel Flights · high-intent search
Markets
Priority international markets Where Bing’s desktop share runs deepest
Engine
Microsoft Advertising Always-on search + Performance Max
APH role
Microsoft Advertising Channel Partner Full-funnel build, run end to end
Year and source
2024 Microsoft Advertising’s case study, shared with APH
The 60-second version
Three sentences that can be read aloud in a meeting.
Situation
Pegasus Airlines, flying to more than 150 destinations across 54 countries, wanted efficient revenue growth under strict ROAS targets — acquisition beyond the saturated channels, with Microsoft Advertising earning a structural place in the mix rather than a test budget.
What APH did
A full-funnel build on two engines: always-on search on the priority international markets where Bing’s desktop share runs deepest, then Performance Max, launched July 2024, pointed at the same strict targets to scale what search had proved.
What changed
44× ROAS on the always-on search campaigns and 33× ROAS within five months of the Performance Max launch. Microsoft Advertising moved from experiment to fixture in the airline’s international acquisition strategy.
All figures on this page are from Microsoft Advertising’s own Pegasus Airlines case study (2024), shared with APH by Microsoft. We cite them; we do not claim them as our measurement.
Exhibit 1 · documented by MicrosoftReturn against spend, by engine.Figures from Microsoft Advertising’s Pegasus Airlines case study, 2024, shared with APH. Bars are proportional to the stated multiples; the value axis starts at zero.
Who, and why now01Context
Pegasus Airlines flies to more than 150 destinations across 54 countries. At that scale the channels that carry digital acquisition are the saturated ones: every competitor is in the same auctions, on the same queries, against the same targets, and growth there comes at a rising price.
Microsoft Advertising sits outside that crowd. On flight queries in the priority international markets, Bing’s share of desktop search runs deepest and the audience is high-intent. The question was not whether Microsoft could deliver a result, but whether the result could hold under the same strict ROAS targets as everything else in the plan.
What they wanted02The brief
Efficient revenue growth under strict ROAS targets, with Microsoft Advertising earning a structural place in the marketing mix rather than a test budget. That last clause is the whole brief: a test budget is spent once and reviewed once; a structural line is defended every quarter. To earn it, the channel had to prove efficiency first, then prove the efficiency survived scale.
Always-on search lit first. Performance Max extended the same signal down the line from July 2024.
What was built03The approach
A full-funnel build on two engines, in sequence: prove the return with search, then point automation at the same target.
01
2024 · always-onAlways-on search on the priority international markets
Flight-related, high-intent queries across the markets where Bing’s share of desktop search runs deepest. Always-on rather than burst: the campaigns had to establish what ROAS the category could sustain, not what a launch week could hit.
02
July 2024 · launchPerformance Max, to scale what search proved
Microsoft’s automation, bidding toward the same strict ROAS targets that search had already met, expanding reach without expanding the team’s workload. The targets were not relaxed for automation, which is what makes the second number comparable to the first.
The turning point · July 2024
Search had shown the return the category could carry. Launching Performance Max against the same targets was the moment the channel stopped being an experiment: if automation reached search-like efficiency at scale, Microsoft Advertising had earned its place. Within five months, it had.
What happened04The results
44× ROAS across the always-on search campaigns, and 33× ROAS within five months of the Performance Max launch — automation reaching near-search efficiency at scale, and reaching it fast. Both figures are as documented by Microsoft Advertising in its 2024 case study on the airline, shared with APH.
Exhibit 1 · documented by MicrosoftReturn against spend, by engine.Each engine returned its spend many times over; search led, and automation came within reach of it in five months.Figures from Microsoft Advertising’s Pegasus Airlines case study, 2024, shared with APH. Bars are proportional to the stated multiples; the value axis starts at zero.
The narrow grey bar is one unit of spend on each engine; the azure bar is what came back. Search returned 44 units for every one spent. Performance Max, five months after launch, returned 33 — three quarters of the way to the search figure, from an engine live for less than half a year and run against the same targets.
Exhibit 2 · milestonesSearch first, then automation, over 2024.A campaign year in three steps: always-on search running, Performance Max launched in July, the documented multiple reached by December.Dates from Microsoft Advertising’s case study, 2024: Performance Max launched in July and reached 33× ROAS within five months. The month always-on search began is not published; the band’s faded edge marks that.
Search was already running when Performance Max launched in July 2024. The automation engine had five months of the year left, and by December its published return was 33× — near-search efficiency inside a single campaign year, with neither engine paused to fund the other.
Exhibit 3 · channel roleFrom test budget to structural fixture.Where Microsoft Advertising stood in the airline’s international acquisition plan at the brief, and where it stood at the end of the campaign year.Qualitative. Microsoft’s account describes the shift from experiment to fixture; no budget shares are stated, so the two levels are ordinal, not measured.
The third exhibit carries no number, and it is the one the brief was written for: the channel entered the year as a test budget and left it as a fixture of the airline’s international acquisition strategy, because the numbers held under the same targets as everything else.
How to read the numbers05Methodology and caveats
Data source
Microsoft Advertising’s Pegasus Airlines case study (2024), shared with APH by Microsoft. Every figure on this page is cited from it. APH did not measure these results independently and does not claim them as its own measurement.
Metric
ROAS, return on ad spend, expressed as a multiple of spend: 44× means 44 units returned for each unit spent. Microsoft’s conversion definition applies.
Window
Campaign year 2024. The search multiple covers the always-on campaigns; the Performance Max multiple was reached within five months of the July 2024 launch.
Comparison basis
Both multiples are against 1× spend on the same engine. This is not a year-on-year or holdout comparison, and no pre-campaign baseline is published.
Seasonality
Travel demand is seasonal and the Performance Max window runs July to December. No seasonal adjustment is stated, so the two engines’ multiples cover different months.
Results will vary
These are one airline’s documented results on Microsoft Advertising. Results depend on category, markets, targets and budget, and we cannot guarantee the same outcome for another advertiser.
The pattern06What’s next
On high-intent categories like flights, Microsoft’s audience is not a rounding error — it is some of the most efficient acquisition spend in the plan. As the Microsoft Advertising Channel Partner behind 80+ brands, this is the pattern we build toward on every airline, travel and e-commerce plan we run.
Prepared by Archon Programmatic House · archonph.com/case-pegasus-2026.html · Last updated 17 September 2026 · Figures cited from Microsoft Advertising’s Pegasus Airlines case study, 2024, shared with APH
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