Many businesses see the value of paid advertising across Google’s AdWords, however many overlook Bing Ads as a lesser, and unnecessary alternative. Whilst we wouldn’t advise investing your marketing budget solely in Bing alone, it can prove an effective component of a digital strategy.
Regardless of Google being the number one search engine across the globe, Bing should not be underestimated. 1 in 3 people in the US are recorded to be using Bing when searching for products, services and consumer queries online. That’s 33% of the market, equating to 6.2 billion searches per month in the US alone (source: ComScore).
Powering Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s Siri, the default search engine on PC’s and Cortana and available as an app for Android and iPhone, Bing has a definite presence among consumers and offers a number of great advantages to Google.
Cheaper Cost-Per-Click
As many businesses do overlook Bing, this means that the platform has generally far less competition than the AdWords auction. This lack of competition provides accounts with a number of benefits including, better ad positions and a cheaper cost per click. Increased ad positions also are likely to have an impact on click-through rates, generating higher a click-through than compared to their Google counterparts.
User Demographic
Bing also offers a user demographic that could be used to the advantage of a wide variety of products. One third of users have a household income of $100,000 or more, 45% are married, 33% single, 52% are over 45 and there are slightly more females than males. While these are US figures, we've seen evidence to suggest the UK audience is very similar.
Source: Bingads.microsoft.com
Search Demographics
Google’s Demographics for Search was launched earlier this year, Bing already was nearly a year ahead in offering the service. This allows you to tailor you campaign targeting settings by gender and age demographic data, based on MSN users’ data.
For brands who have a clearly defined target audience e.g. females 18-30, this allows marketers to cut out unnecessary spending on people outside of the core converting audience. Or if your consumer profile isn’t quite as clearly defined, demographic targeting can become part of campaign optimisation, adjusting bids towards top converting genders and ages.
Better Device Targeting
Another frustration of AdWords is the inability to raise or lower your tablet bids, both tablets and desktops are bundled together, so even truly optimising to desktop performance is impossible. Bing has split out tablet from desktop enabling separate bid control over your three core devices, desktop, tablet and mobile.
Bing Ads provides a number of great advantages and benefits to businesses and advertisers that Google has not yet utilised. Continuing to update and improve their platform Bing looks likely to advance their growth into the global search market and secure their presence. It’s time advertisers looked further than AdWords and made use of the low CPC’s, search demographics and device targeting Bing has to offer.
