Weekly PPC tip: Bing Ads performs just as good as Google AdWords

Or in some cases we see Bing Ads will outperform AdWords. So, if you don't have a Bing Ads account yet, you should import your AdWords accounts to Bing Ads straight away.

What is Bing Ads?

Bing Ads is the search engine advertising network of both Microsoft Bing and Yahoo!. In 2012 the two search companies decided to join forces in the so called "Search Allience" and renamed their search advertising networks into Bing Ads. When advertising through Bing Ads your ads will be shown on both Bing.com and Yahoo.com.

What about market share?

Although it's very through that Google is the #1 search engine in terms of worldwide market share don't underestimate the market share of Bing and Yahoo! in some areas.

1. United States: 64% Google / 20% Bing / 13% Yahoo!
2. United Kingdom: 88% Google / 7% Bing / 3,6% Yahoo!
3. Germany: 92% Google / 3% Bing / 2% Yahoo!

Why should you care about using Bing Ads?

Even though Bing and Yahoo!market share is in most markets much lower than Google I you should still care about using the network. Why?

1. You want to capture all of the searchers for your product or service;
2. Microsoft expects Bing search volume to grow by 15% in september 2015 because of Windows 10;
3. http://searchengineland.com/with-windows-10-bing-ads-anticipates-10-to-15-percent-more-search-volume-by-september-226432
4. Generally speaking, Bing Ads is less competitive compared to Google AdWords. Therefore Bing Ads will show a lower CPC (Cost-Per-Click);
5. Because of the lower competition on Bing Ads, it's generally easier to capture head terms with higher volume;
6. Bing Ads makes it extremely easy for you to import your AdWords campaigns and changes into their system;
7. Bing Ads has Auto-Tagging available for Google Analytics

http://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/28521/auto-tagging-of-destination-urls-in-bing-ads

Downsides of Bing Ads

Bing Ads wants to be like Google AdWords. Period. Although they are growing and try their best I think they are not there yet. I will name a few reasons why.

1. The Bing Ads editor doesn't work on a Mac;
2. They still use the €0,05 minimum bid threshold, while AdWords changed this about 10 years a go to €0,01. In fact there will be very little keywords where you can get away with bids less than €0,05. Grow up Bing Ads;
3. In The Netherlands Geo-targeting works extremely bad (i.e. you can only target a province and not a city anymore);
4. Be very careful with Bing Ads search partners. In many cases they perform very poor.

Conclusion

In my opinion there are many great reasons to get started with Bing Ads ASAP. It's a great system and will benefit most advertisers. They are also moving quickly towards the level of AdWords by adding remarketing and Bing Ads Shopping.

What are your thoughts about Bing Ads?

Written by

Adriaan Boo