Microsoft had a great year in paid search advertising in 2016, celebrating a 23% year over year growth in search advertising.
Bing and Yahoo’s reports paint a really wonderful picture of Bing Ads’ growth this past year. Bing grew to 19.7% of the US search market share and Yahoo saw a 10% increase in paid search clicks in 2016 over 2015. And while there’s no doubt that they’re both still trailing Google in search volume, they’re gaining on paid search clicks. Google paid search clicks were down 11% year over year in 2016. How does Bing shine compared to Google in paid search? Here are 3 of the major differences:
- Less Competition.
And Lower Cost Per Click (CPC) Bing uses an auction format like Google Adwords, so less competition equals better ad positions and cheaper costs per click. According to Wordstream, CPC’s are an average of 33.5% cheaper CPC on Bing. Not only were these clicks cheaper on Bing, but ads often have better positions than their Google counterparts and had higher Click Through Ratios. - Timing is Everything.
Bing allows advertisers to assign different campaigns different time zones. This makes sophisticated ad scheduling strategies far easier to manage in Bing. - Sharpen Your Aim.
Google AdWords allows control over demographic targeting on the Google Display Network, they do not allow the specific targeting of search ads. Bing Ads give us the ability to control gender and age demographics for your search ads. Demographic targeting can be controlled at either the campaign or ad group level on Bing.
Okay, the budgets might be smaller, but there are a lot of folks still married to the Microsoft Suite, and therefore, Internet Explorer and Bing Search by lack of technical expertise or restrictions on work computers. Moving to Bing probably will not change your world, but it may provide a few more clicks for the same dollars that are spent on Google.
Eric Van Cleave is CEO of Zenergy Works and TIV Branding, located in Santa Rosa, California.