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First Glance: How Pay-Per-Click Marketers Should React to BingPosted by Andrew on June 4, 2009 in Microsoft adCenter |
I’m not here to tell you Bing is the greatest thing ever, and I’m not here to tell you that, No, Bing is not a “Google Killer.” Lots of others have already weighed in on the topic and, as a search marketer, that’s not my worry.
As a search marketer, I’m only worried about campaign impact. And, as far as I can tell, campaign impact can only happen if people are searching (or is it deciding?) with Bing.
So, Will People Use Bing?
Based on Microsoft’s ad spend, I would imagine that, yes, People will most definitely come, at least over the next few weeks. On Wednesday night, I saw a Bing advertisement on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, and my wife (I swear, it was my wife), noticed one on So You Think You Can Dance? So it’s clear that Bing is not discriminating on the basis of gender, dancing ability, or intelligence. They’re welcoming all interested parties to Bing.
So then, What Should PPC Managers Do About Bing?
Well, the good thing is that there is no account or campaign migration necessary. Your AdCenter accounts remain your AdCenter accounts, and all of your ads and keywords that were running through Live Search will continue uninterrupted.
The bad thing is that AdCenter’s clumsy, difficult-to-navigate and prone-to-shutdowns user interface hasn’t changed either. Expect no great leaps forward in terms of ease of use as a marketer. Bing’s assistance in decision-making is strictly for the searcher, it would appear.
Well then, What Does Bing Mean in the Short Term?
If you have AdCenter accounts, expect to see more traffic to them. Expect to see impressions increase.
Bing’s impact might be more direct if you are an advertiser in the broad categories of travel, shopping, health, or local search. These four categories are the initial elements of Microsoft and Bing’s “decision” focus and, as such, you might find a more competitive advertising landscape than you did on Live Search. Additionally, because Bing is promoting itself as a place for answers related to these topics, expect the natural results to provide stiffer “competition” than they did previously. Click-through rates in these categories may see a decline, but you might also find searchers that are closer to a decision and, therefore, more likely to buy.
So then, really, What Does Bing Mean for Me?
Pay a bit more attention to AdCenter.
If you’re at all like me, at some point you exported your Google campaigns from AdWords Editor, you made the necessary tweaks to ads, you cut bids in half, you failed in six or eight or 22 upload efforts into AdCenter, you eventually completed the import (mostly manually, of course) and you’ve let the campaigns sit there.
So, really, pay just a bit more attention to your AdCenter accounts, and be prepared to be more dynamic in your management than you were forced to be previously.
As always, the marketer who makes the effort, and who makes the effort intelligently, will be the marketer who reaps the benefits.
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June 5th, 2009 at 2:06 am
Ad Center can be extremely tedious but it can be worthwhile. It’s worth noting that MSN Ad Center Desktop (Google Adwords Editor style software) is currently in BETA and is being tested by selected agencies. It has it’s weak points as you would expect from a Microsoft BETA but it does make the import and management of accounts a LOT easier. Watch this space.
June 5th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Andrew, you’re right in assuming increased competition but I would also expect increased ROI from a more qualified audience. There’s a lot of current work behind the curtain in adCenter (imagine Frank Morgan pulling the levers in the Wizard of Oz) improving the relevance of ads to queries. As well, Bing’s focus on retail should further qualify traffic. Retailers who tailor their ads and landing pages to the searcher’s intent should see a bump in conversions.
And yes, the adCenter UI still has a ways to go. I think you can expect to see significant improvement in the API to support the larger ecosystem of tool providers.
June 5th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Are they rolling out ads slowly? The searches I have done that should have yielded some ads; cars, insurance, new bicycle. I finally got ads when searching for Insurance Quote, but not when I did New Car Quote. Or is this an indication of lack of competition on the Microsoft search space?
June 8th, 2009 at 7:19 am
“…you eventually completed the import (mostly manually, of course) and you’ve let the campaigns sit there.”
So right! The worst part of my month is addressing Ad Center. Even the simplest things (such as negative keywords and campaign navigation) are a chore with that clunky interface. Google give us marketers the tools to be successful with PPC – tools I have yet to see from Yahoo! or MSN/Live/Bing.
Until the usability and toolset of Yahoo! and Ad Center are on par with Google (and *maybe* the traffic increases as well) then anyone who cares about minimizing diminishing returns will spend as little time within those campaigns as possible.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
In my opinoin, Bing doesn’t offer too much competition to Google because Google is simply way too established for another search engine to take it’s shine; HOWEVER, Bing has an amazingly amuzing TV commercial out right now and I believe this will drive traffic to Bing.com.
With this being said, it is imperative that us as marketers pay more attention to AdCenter.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Going along the lines of Charles’ comment, according to our Microsoft reps, the only real change that will come on the PPC side of things is that users who exhibit a low propensity to click any ads will stop seeing them served. In this manner, results will become “more relevant,” your impressions should decrease, but your CTRs will increase as such because you are still getting the “good” clicks. The reps would not disclose how Bing determines someone is not going to click ads, or how long it takes to determine such. I’m not sure how I feel about arbitrarily decreasing impressions, but so far, I have not seen an impact.
June 8th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Thanks for your all your comments!
Jon – I think that the combination of a widely-available desktop product would go miles to improve the advertiser experience on AdCenter, and would improve the quality of Bing’s sponsored search.
Charles – I’ve already noticed that my personal queries on Bing are more decision-focused than my more general Google queries. I wonder if Bing’s decision-oriented advertising has influenced the type of user. I suspect it has.
Ellerton – Your comments on users seeing fewer ads based on previous behavior is very interesting, and impressions are certainly something to track.
Kevin – I think your situation may be a case of search on low advertising-competition keywords. However, note Ellerton’s comment about Bing serving fewer ads to users who generally don’t click on them. Perhaps you’re among that group.
Michael – I’m right with you!
S.P. – I don’t think we can be so sure about Google’s continued dominance. There was, after all, a time when, say, Altavista or Yahoo were market leaders. Especially on the ‘Net, people will follow a quality user experience, and quickly. I don’t expect Bing to reach 70 percent share levels, but I can definitely see it showing steady increases after the initial bump from TV advertising.
June 10th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Yes they have put together a 100 million dollar ad budget for their new search engine so you can imagine that we will be seeing a lot more ads running on prime time television in order to get the word out.
June 30th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Has anyone else had their ads simply stop running and told after a gazillion calls that its in DEVELOPMENT? We were whitelisted going in and I cant get any one to return a call or help me.