What is Bing Ads?

Bing Ads are an online advertising service that allows reaching potential customers who use Bing, Yahoo, and AOL search engines.

Bing Ads are like Google AdWords, but they have some differences where Bing search engine powers search on the Bing, AOL, and Yahoo networks.

Bing advertising also enables advertisers to target their ads by confining them to a given set of demographics that helps websites direct the ads more effectively.

Bing is the second popular pay per click on PPC platforms. Bing has a good amount of traffic to provide good results for PPC campaigns.

Bing’s market share has been consistently growing and providing a new opportunity for advertisers for expanding and diversifying the online reach.

Bing’s platform PPC service allows you to show ads on both the Bing or Yahoo search engines and related networks.

Bing ads were formerly known as Microsoft AdCenter and MSN AdCenter before Microsoft’s search engine was renamed to Bing in 2009.

Bing is the Microsoft recommended search engine and powers the Windows voice assistant Cortana. Bing enables advertisers to track and monitor campaigns, clicks, CTRs, spend and budget.

Bing ads allow you to cross-device products ads to Bing, Yahoo, and MSN customers and support imported pay per click ad campaigns from Google AdWords.

Bing can retarget ads to customers after they complete an action in leaving a shopping cart or viewing a product.

The Cost of Bing Ads –

The average cost per click (CPC) in Bing ads is between 33% and 42% cheaper than Google AdWords.

Bing ads are more economical and it can be of higher utility when it comes to highly competitive sectors.

Advantages of Bing Ads –

One of the biggest advantages of Bing ads is that you can import your Google AdWords campaigns.

Bing ads have increasingly gained the attention of many advertisers. But most people are still unclear about the benefits of using it.

There are many reasons for using:-

# Display – Bing ads in text and display-based ads are supported by Yahoo and AOL.

In the Bing search engine, ads appear in the first few rankings without highlighting the “Ad” symbol. Viewers may not recognize the ad link and click on it increase the CTR.

# Reporting – Bing offers advanced analytics tracking software that allows staying on top of your campaign performance.

You can create a negative keyword list, experiment with keywords, and discover the most effective time to post your ads.

# Expanded Text Ads – Bing Expanded Text Ads (ETA) are similar to Google. It’s possible to import ETAs from Google AdWords into the Bing ads web interface or Bing Ads Editor that makes campaigns a little easier.

You never need to build your PPC campaigns from scratch and you can import existing Ads campaigns into Bing. You can start building campaigns around what you have been doing with Google AdWords.

# Campaign Creation Workflow – The campaign creation workflow is designed to make campaign setup and activation easier.

Bing ads give you group level options as well as allow you to quickly adjust a setting for a particular ad group without creating a whole new campaign.

It gives you more targeted PPC results and better competition to reach a specific audience. You can select a campaign goal or research keywords and the options are customized accordingly to meet your goals.

Bing ads can group keywords together into proposed ad groups based on a URL or keyword.

Each keyword can be viewed to drill down into the monthly search volume, average CPC and scale of the competition. You can set the campaign budget and multiple ads can be set up during the process.

# Shared Budgets – Shared budgets are a great tool for Bing ads to manage campaign budgets. Shared budgets represent all the campaigns or any selected campaigns to the pooled budget that gets allocated as per the campaign need.

The campaigns that are performing well while the other campaigns are under-performing can be switched out to save time on budget rating.

# Location Targeting – Bing allows multiple targeting settings at the ad group level. It’s useful for location targeting when you want to split the same campaign goals across multiple locations with different ad groups.

Bing ads are enhancing their location targeting, ads scheduling capabilities and, allows advertisers to better target the audiences.

# Flexibility – Bing ads allow you to target only Bing and Yahoo or both and all of which can be chosen at the ad group level.

You can see reports to see which search partners are directing traffic to your website. You can exclude individual partners and continue to get traffic from all others.

It gives you the flexibility to get the most from Bing’s partners without wasting money on others. Bing’s users can target specific audiences based on the types of devices.

It also allows users to target only mobile devices and opt-out of desktop devices. Bing targeting allows targeting your ads towards gender, age brackets, and time zone.

You have the option to choose what language your audience speaks for different ad groups. Google is restrictive when it comes to changing up any of these targeting options.

# Lower CPC – The average CPC is up to 33% lower than compared to Google ads. Bing ads use a similar dynamic auction as the Google AdWords and advertisers have several advantages from a lower level of competition.

The fewer advertisers are driving up the price of your keywords that resulting in better ad positions and cheaper cost per click (CPC).

The majority of the people using Google as the primary source for PPC campaigning and as a result, it has become overcrowded, saturated, and expensive.

You’ll have to pay more money to place higher bids to get to the top of Google quickly. Google’s higher quality score helps, but it takes time and experimentation to build.

You may find the cost per click (CPC) to significantly cheaper on Bing ads due to the lack of competition. The fewer advertisers on the Bing platform are reflected in the average cost per click (CPC).

The competition is much lower in Bing, and it’s easier to get traffic when you need. You’ll also require a lesser budget to run PPC campaigns on the Bing search platform.

# Device Targeting – Google Ads can be limited in mobile device ad targeting. Bing allows you to target specific mobile devices based on type as well as based on their operating system (OS).

It’s helpful in the demographic audience that favors a specific mobile device. It can be useful when you promote an app that is available for a specific device or version.

You can serve highly targeted ads to your audience if your product or service is focused on a particular mobile device.

# Better ROI – Bing ads have a tendency to be more effective as they get higher click through rates (CTR) with a lower CPC and convert to better ROI.

Google AdWords might be a good option for those who are exclusively looking for volume. You can achieve great results when it comes to getting the most out of your investments in Bing ads.

Mobile search advertisements are more focused on Bing and you can get a granular level of the campaign. Bing’s users are likely to be an older demographic on average and they spend more time and lesser bounce rates as well.

Every marketer will attempt to reach the engaged audience in a bid to focus the right customers on their website.

Types of Campaign in Bing Ads –

Bing continues to evolve the service, developing and releasing new ads features and capabilities for marketers to use it for PPC campaigns.

Bing advertising options will depend on what country you are targeting. The primary Bing ads types that you can create are:-

# Expanded Text Ads (ETA) – ETAs are like Google AdWords ads with two titles and a description. These ETAs are available in all countries.

# Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) – These ads are similar to expanded ads, but these can be created automatically in response to a search or the content of your website.

DSAs are designed to increase ad engagement. You can use two description fields, up to 90 characters each to make adds more specific.

The new DSA format also includes dynamically generated ad titles. The DSA option is available in the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US).

# Product Ads – These Bing ads are equivalent to AdWords shopping ads. It’ll contain a product image and a promotional copy.

These elements are pulled from a product feed that you’ll need to upload to the Bing Merchant Center. You can build these ads from scratch or can import any Google campaigns.

You can enhance the catalog feeds in product ads with the attributes such as Product Category, Brand Name, Product Type, Condition of Product, Merchant Product Identifier, and Customized Label.

# Other Campaign Types – Some other campaign types are available in specific markets such as App Install Ads or Microsoft Audience Ads are not available everywhere.

Best Practices in Bing Ads –

Bing ads present a fantastic opportunity to generate search leads at a relatively lower cost. Bing advertising is a PPC platform and equivalent to Google’s search ads or display ads.

# Import Campaigns – Bing understands the vast majority of PPC advertisers and is provided with the import of Google AdWords function.

If you’re a great structure in AdWords campaigns and then you can utilize the importing option to bring your AdWords structure into Bing.

These two channels behave differently and you should not wait long to import the campaigns.

# Conversion Tracking – The import of Google AdWords campaigns is a great and efficient way to get into your Bing account for setting up and running.

Bing has its own separate platform and it has a separate conversion tracking code that will need to be planted.

Bing’s conversion code works differently than Google Ads. AdWords create a separate conversion pixel for each conversion goal and you need to track.

Bing has one Universal Event Tracking (UET) code and it has one tag to rule all your tags similar to Google Tag Manager (GTM).

# Monitor & Optimize – Your campaigns imported from AdWords also need to set up conversion tracking with Bing UET code.

The Bing Keyword Planner is a free tool that will help to perfectly set your bids based on the estimated traffic volume.

You’ll expect the lower bids due to the lesser competition. It’s also possible to import your expanded text ads (ETA) from Google.

When you choose to import both ETAs and standard text ads from Google, then you can begin testing different ad messages to align Bing demographics.

Pros of Bing Ads –

—- Bing campaign import tools allow to easily convert previous campaigns into Bing to save your time and effort.

—- Bing ads have lesser competition that results in fewer keyword bids and a lower PPC.

—- Bing has excellent reporting features to manage your campaign.

—- There are over 6 billion unique searches every month.

Cons of Bing Ads –

—- You can’t reach a bigger portion of the market share against the majority of people that are using Google.

—- Bing has a smaller market share of 33% as compared to Google.

—- Bing search engine has older demographics between the ages of 35 and 65 that may not suit your campaign.

—- Bing may not have any international audience.

Conclusion – Bing Ads are a great way to complement Google ads strategy. Bing advertising can be a good option to increase your conversions at a price that is usually cheaper than Google AdWords. You can reach people who are not using Google for their online searches. Bing advertising is a big way to tap markets that are untapped for a long time. Bing may not have a market share as big as Google’s market share of online search traffic, but it definitely holds its own with Yahoo.