When it comes to PPC advertising, many marketers forget to include Bing Ads into the conversation. It may be because Google AdWords has the far greater audience size and that warrants more attention by advertisers. Instead, advertisers should take a closer look at what Bing Ads has to offer, because there is a high potential for untapped markets at a lower cost.
I personally always advocate for a crossover strategy where AdWords and Bing Ads are shown together to help fill in the gaps of the other. According to Bing, the search engine has 63 million users across all industries not reached by Google AdWords. At its core, AdWords and their strategies operate within two primary advertising networks: Bing Ads has a similar network structure to AdWords with its own search network. Bing Ads can show ads across three search engines – Bing, Yahoo!, and AOL. Advertising on Bing Ads will show ads in all three of these networks, in addition to sites that are part of Bing’s Syndicated Partner Network like Apple’s Siri, Amazon Fire, CBS Interactive and The Wall Street Journal. When you compare the ROI metrics of Bing Ads and AdWords, on average, you’ll see a consistent trend of Bing Ads giving you a greater payoff. A study by Search Engine Land found that average Cost per-Click (CPC) was nearly half of AdWords’ across many major industries:[2] While the CPC for Bing Ads is much lower than in AdWords, it’s also essential to consider the size of your search audience when setting goals. Bing Ads are still working with a noticeably smaller group than AdWords and this can influence the quality of search traffic. The Bing Network Audience is made up of households with large incomes. Outside of the 38% with incomes over $100,000, the second largest demographic were households making between $75,000 and $99,999 at 17%.[3] When we look at the education background of the Bing Network, over one-third have graduated with at least a bachelor’s degree.[4] Optimizing the quality of your conversions is essential and Bing allows this more effectively. AdWords allows marketers to target users based on language, location, and on a schedule. Bing Ads offers these same controls but takes them a step further with ad group level controls. Bing Ads also allows marketer to assign different ad campaigns to different time zones – something unique to Bing. You read that right. Bing Ads has a built-in feature that allows marketers to import their AdWords campaigns into Bing so you can start advertising quickly. Although the Bing Ads interface borrows a lot of features from AdWords, but not everything will line up perfectly. After you’ve imported your AdWords campaigns, you’ll want to inspect your ad group-level extensions, remarketing lists, and IP exclusions to ensure that they’re showing properly. You may also want to run your keywords through Bing’s keyword research tools to better optimize for the platform. Google’s keyword planner pulls terms based on the traffic and activity in Google Search. Bing’s algorithm and userbase may cause some terms to behave differently. Using the optimization tools that the platform provides can help you reach your goals. Bing Ads has a lot of functionality to offer digital marketers and the platform’s ability to bring results shouldn’t be underestimated. Even a simple campaign with Ad Groups, keywords, and landing pages imported into Bing Ads can open the possibility to untapped conversions. With effective optimization and an open mind, Bing Ads can be a cost-effective way to expand your conversions. [1]“The Bing Network Audience”. Bing. https://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/insights/planning-tools/bing-network-audience
[2]Ginny M. “New PPC Report”. Search Engine Land. https://searchengineland.com/new-ppc-report-bing-ads-vs-adwords-in-6-us-verticals-152229
[3]“The Bing Network Audience”. Bing. https://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/insights/planning-tools/bing-network-audience
[4]Ibid.