Are Bing Ads Worth it? Do Bing Ads Work?
While many people know and love Google for search and advertising, it tends to overshadow a valuable complimentary PPC marketing platform: Bing’s Microsoft Advertising.
You might be wondering, are Bing ads worth it? Do Bing ads work compared to Google search ads? The short answer is yes, but also… maybe. The true answer depends on your business’s needs. Though many companies focus their advertising efforts more on Google, there are many ways in which you can extend your reach and maximize growth opportunities using Bing Ads.
By 2019 Microsoft’s Bing search engine was responsible for more than 936 million monthly searches. Bing is the second most widely used search engine for desktop search, meaning that thinking about how people use it could help you expand your marketing reach across an often dismissed platform. At the beginning of this year, Bing accounted for more than 6% of the global search market, and its ad network has become large enough to bring Microsoft more than $7.6 billion a year.
Plus, Bing ads can extend across its total ad network, meaning that advertisers can gain access to high-value audiences across the web.
So is Bing advertising worth it?
We will go over the important questions like reach, costs, and conversion rates but we’ll also talk about some of the features that are unique to Bing ads that make it stand out as a marketing platform.
What are Bing ads?
The concept behind Bing ads is essentially the same as Google Ads. Microsoft Advertising is a pay-per-click (PPC) platform that is designed to help you reach a specific audience, increase traffic to your website and increase your revenue.
Bing ads look mostly the same in the SERP as ads on Google and their overall title and meta data length is about the same. Bing ads works on an auction system that is similar to Google’s where advertisers can show relevant ads to users who are searching those keywords. Marketers can target search keywords for a chance to have their ad appear in search results pages, and pay a small fee for every click. This form of search advertising remains one of the most popular forms of internet advertising because it’s still so successful. All that’s needed is a campaign set up through the Microsoft Merchant Center and a budget.
Bing search ads let advertisers gain access to a wider range of potential customers and the ad platform lets marketers target specific keywords important to them.
Reach
Because Bing is owned by Microsoft, when you advertise using Bing ads you are also advertising on Yahoo, AOL, MSN, and various partnering sites. A huge benefit to utilizing Bing’s advertising options is that you are filling any gaps in your advertising campaigns that you might be missing by focusing on Google alone.
Although Bing only accounts for 6% of the global search engine market share, Bing ads still reach 63 million users. If you are not using Bing ads, that is a significant amount of missed opportunity.
Bing also has 936.5 million monthly global visitors and about 12 billion monthly searches worldwide. Although its market share seems small when you look at the percentage of users, it’s important to note that Bing is constantly growing and improving.
Not only can you use Bing ads to increase your overall visibility within engines, but you can also reach a wider and more specific demographic.
Demographics
Bing accounts for 30% of all searches within the United States making it the second most popular search engine stateside. Bing also accounts for 34% of all desktop searches within the U.S. and has a monthly search volume of 500 million in the U.S.
If you are advertising your products locally or mostly to American customers, then you should consider using Bing ads as part of your marketing strategy.
Bing’s audience share by gender also reveals that they have almost an equal amount of male and female users meaning there is an equal opportunity to target each in your marketing strategy.
When it comes to age and Bing ads, if you are marketing products to millennials, they may not be the best place to supplement your advertising strategy. If you are targeting an older audience though, you should look further into Bing marketing.
The largest percentage of Bing users falls within the 45-54 age range and about one-third of users have a household income of 100K or more. So, if you would like to start targeting older customers with a larger expendable income, Bing ads are a great way to reach them.
Bing also has a large number of married users and users with children. About 51% of Bing users are married and 45% have children that are living at home. Utilizing Bing ads means even more opportunities to expand your reach to include more families.
Depending on your target audience, utilizing Bing ads can help you reach the people that you are not already reaching using your current marketing strategies. We recommend you assess the areas that your current strategy may be lacking in as far as reaching your desired audience and perhaps incorporating Bing ads to improve on your strategy.
Cost
Although paid ad budgets fluctuate by industry, Bing ads tend to be very affordable (though, affordability is mainly determined by your budget). Many argue that the lower costs are directly related to the fact that Bing has much less of the global search market share meaning there is less competition for keywords. Plus, creating a Microsoft Advertising account is free on its own, the only costs associated with your ads is the budget required for keyword bids.
For many industries however, these lower costs mean that clicks are cheaper, and you get more for your money. When it comes to Bing ads and Google Ads, the average cost per click on Bing is less than half the average cost of Google ads.
With that being said, hypothetically you could double your ad budget utilizing Bing ads, however this depends on your industry and we don’t recommend you put all your eggs in one basket with Bing just to double your budget.
Take the time to research the costs for keywords in your industry and compare them to how much Bing ads costs. If there is an opportunity to expand your reach and spend less of your add budget, perhaps you will want to start allocating some of your funds toward Bing Ads. With help from a PPC management firm you can get keyword research and insight on which campaign strategies can best work for your business’s KPIs. If you’re still wondering if Bing advertising is worth the effort, get insight from an expert team to explore how targeting important keywords on the Bing platform might help your business.
Are Bing ads worth it when considering the cost? The custom nature of PPC ads and the ability to set your budget means that you can spend as much or as little as you want.
Click Through Rates
Bing ads are known for having higher click-through-rates for shopping and financial services search verticals than their competitor Google. Because Yahoo and MSN offer financial reporting resources and ads in those verticals, they are able to reach a highly interested audience which means higher engagement and higher CTRs.
As with everything else, the better your Bing advertising campaign is optimized, the better your click-through-rate (CTR). This is yet another area where performance is tied to maintaining, adjusting, and running a campaign with expertise and by using data to finetune your ad campaigns.
Conversion Rates
Bing PPC ads tend to have higher engagement and post click landing lading pages that they are sent to, however the average conversion rate across all industries is around 2.94%. Again, these conversion rates are an average across all industries so depending on yours, this number may be higher or lower.
Justifying the value of your Bing ads campaign can be easier by tracking metrics in the Microsoft Advertising interface. Bing gives users the Conversion Goals Page to track conversion, conversion rate, revenue, cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and revenue on ad spend. This platform will be helpful for businesses running a new campaign, wondering to themselves “do Bing ads work?”
Bing’s Advertising Targeting Capabilities
Bing ads have a number of targeting capabilities including in market, location, day of the week, gender, age and more. Where Bing advertising really stands out though is with it’s LinkedIn profile targeting and device targeting capabilities.
The LinkedIn profile targeting option allows you to market or advertise to specific individuals or companies. This is extremely helpful if you are practicing account-based marketing.
Bing’s device targeting allows you to target based on user’s device type and OS, as well as assign different time zones to different campaigns. You can also choose to not display your ads on desktops to focus more on mobile users.
So Is Bing Advertising Worth It?
Although Bing makes up a small percentage of the world market share, Bing ads are still reaching millions of people. However, if you are wondering if Bing ads are worth it, that depends on your individual business’s needs. Working with a professional Bing ads management team can help you map out your specific goals, and what your campaign might look like. This is a route most businesses choose to go.
Bing is slowly growing and has been slowly been increasing its percentage of the world market share for years. Because a majority of its users are from the United States, Bing ads offer plenty of opportunities to expand your reach to people within the U.S.
Again, we do not recommend you spend your entire marketing budget on Bing ads, but it is always a good idea to be looking for areas to expand your marketing efforts and reach new potential customers.
Even if you only decide to use Bing ads as a supplement to your other paid ad efforts, it is worth looking into. Do the research on costs to decide if utilizing Bing ads is right for your business.
We recommend that when you start to use Bing that you let it run long enough to collect data to compare it to your other PPC platforms. That way you can make a decision based on your business’s unique needs.
Learn More
Are Bing ads worth it for your business? Contact our team to get more information about setting up a search ads campaign or to take advantage of professional PPC management services.