Introduction
This article will present some data on Microsoft's search engine and introduce another paid media platform option: Microsoft Advertising, formerly known as Bing Ads. As well as the pros and cons of advertising on the channel.
To get the most out of this reading, we suggest you read the following article on Google Ads. This is because how Microsoft Advertising works is very similar to how Google Ads works. The article presents several important points that are very similar between the platforms. For example, keywords and key phrases (keywords), investment costs and others.
Now let's find out a little more about Microsoft Advertising.
Do you know Bing?
Created by Microsoft in 2009, Bing is a search engine that replaced Live Search and MSN Search. Similar to Google, this search engine has results for websites, images, videos, news and maps.
You may be asking yourself: But who uses Bing?
According to ComScore data, the typical user of the search engine is between 55 and 64 years old, representing ⅓ of desktop searches in the United States. The main reason for this is that this search engine is the standard on all Microsoft products.
Some search engines for mobile devices also have this search engine as their factory default, including Amazon Kindle and Siri from Apple.
In Brazil, according to Statcounter, in November 2019 Bing accounted for 2.47% of searches, while Google is still a major player with 95.2%.
However, when analyzing the entire globe, this figure rises to 5.2% and Google's dominance drops considerably to 88.21%. Its greatest relevance is in the United States (11.59%), the United Kingdom (9.21%), and Canada (7.93%) data from November 2019.
Curiosity: In China, you have the dominance of two other search engines, little known in Brazil and a volume of Bing very close to Google with the following distribution: Sogou (41.66%), Baidu (38.64%), Google (6.39%), Haosou (6.35%) and Bing (6.35%).
Microsoft Advertising
Google Ads are already well known within Digital Marketing, but few people know that Bing also has its own paid advertising system! At the beginning of 2019, Bing Ads, now Microsoft Advertising, enabled ad management, with keyword targeting, very similar to Google.
Microsoft Advertising shows your ads when the user searches online for a term related to the keywords included by your company. This directs them to your website, your telephone number or your physical location.
Ads are shown to users of Bing, MSN, Yahoo, AOL, other sites powered by Bing and exclusive partners with AOL, The Wall Street Journal, Gumtree, InfoSpace and others
You'll only be charged when someone clicks on your ad. In fact, the Microsoft Advertising system is so similar to Google Ads that you can log in to your Google account and import campaigns, with the same settings! You can import ads, groups, campaigns and keywords.
NOTE: If you use a Google bid management system, such as maximize conversionsBing will not be able to import this same system.
It is therefore possible to create campaigns segmented by location, language, keywords and time schedule, in order to reach your target audience within this search engine.
Google Ads vs. Microsoft Advertising
Below is a selection of the "Pros and Cons" of Microsoft Advertising compared to Google Ads. The main differences between the platforms are types of campaigns available, the CPC value and potential reach audience.
At Microsoft, you don't have the same variety of campaigns as at Google, and you can't create the following campaigns: video, app, display and shopping.
Another big difference is the CPC (cost per click). Due to the smaller number of advertisers on this channel, the Bing auction tends to be 33% lower than the Google Ads average. This lower competition allows advertisers to get cheaper traffic to their site, without necessarily losing quality.
Finally, there is the potential reach of searches. As discussed in the article, there is a 92.73% difference in search volume in favor of Google Ads, making the potential audience reach much greater than Bing.
Is it worth advertising on Microsoft Advertising?
The answer is simple: YES! Why include Microsoft Advertising in your marketing portfolio?
- Increase the reach of a qualified audience. By creating campaigns on Bing, you'll be able to find a qualified user for your business on a new search network, reaching new people.
- New impact channel. We know that all users go through a buying/registration journey. Although each segment has a specific average time, the greater the diversification of channels, the greater the impact of your ads on your target audience, and you can even reduce the time of this journey.
- Low barrier to entry. The setup process in Microsoft Advertising is free and quick. In just a few minutes, you can create an accountregister a payment method, and if you already have Google Ads, you can import the campaigns in their entirety!
- Low initial investment. It has already been mentioned that the search volume for Bing has its limitations. What's interesting is that this can also be an advantage for starting to run ads on the channel. With less investment, you'll be able to cover a greater percentage of searches for your business.
- Qualified and cheap traffic. Search engine campaigns tend to be more qualified, as the ad is reactive to the user's search. Combined with a CPC on average 33% lower than Google, you can guarantee qualified traffic at a lower cost than Google.
Conclusion
In short, Microsoft Advertising is a relatively new platform that is constantly growing.
When we compare the two platforms (Microsoft Advertising and Google Ads) it's important to make it clear that they don't bring the same traffic to your site. That's why we can think of these paid media platforms as complementary.
If you already have ads running on Google Ads, why not test them on Microsoft Ads? Start with a small budget, import your main campaigns, access a cheaper audience and gradually make optimizations and adjustments.
Are you interested in advertising on Microsoft Ads? Talk to our experts and learn about interesting strategies for advertising on this channel.
Sources:
https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/desktop/brazil#monthly-201805-201808
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