Bing Is Growing But Should You Be Using It For PPC?

Whilst Google still holds most of the search engine market share in many countries, Bing has seen a steady increase in its share over the past few years. Bing has been continuing to develop a lot over the years to compete with Google, and they are showing no signs of stopping. More than 80% of people own a Windows laptop, which comes with Microsoft Edge pre-installed and Bing as the default search engine. Their main battle is getting people to stick with Edge, rather than installing Chrome as their default browser. After a seemingly big drop in February 2018, which appears to have been caused by a Windows update, Bing currently has it’s grasp on 12.1% of the search engine market. This seems like a quite small amount, on the surface, compared to Googles 82.85% but if we compare it to the 2.53% held by Yahoo, it’s a pretty good percentage. Bing’s market share is continuing to rise whereas the popularity of Google is slowly falling. Bing is also used by smart speakers, such as the Amazon Echo and other voice search systems such as Cortana on Windows. Google has released its own speaker, but with the popularity of the Amazon Echo and other devices, Bing still has the upper hand when it comes to voice search queries. This growth in market share makes an interesting case for investing your time and money in to Bing Ads. Let’s have a look at the pros and cons.  

The Good & The Bad For Bing Ads

One main disadvantage is that Google dwarfs Bing in terms of traffic, as mentioned previously, so your ads has a smaller potential target market from the outset. However, on average, Bing does have a cheaper cost per click than Google Ads due to the less crowded market place and the low numbers of businesses currently using the advertising platform. In some industries there is a better click through rate too. This could mean you end up with a better ROI if those who click on your ads than on Google too. Although the low traffic volumes are an issue for many, Bing still gets 960 million unique searches each month in the UK alone. That is a lot of searches and users that those advertising on Google won’t be benefiting from. One big advantage is that Bing Ads allows you to advertise across the Bing Network, which lets you show your ads not only on Bing but also on Yahoo and MSN (yes, this still exists). It also uses Ecosia, a search engine that uses the ads income to plant trees, to serve adverts too. If the thought of setting up lots of new campaigns in Bing is a burden, you can take advantage of a feature on Bing Ads that allows you to import your campaigns from Google Ads, saving a lot of time and effort. This means you can import the bulk of your campaigns and just go in and tweak different elements afterwards. Of course, with any investment you need to really evaluate your goals and look at your target audience to see whether it is worth your time but if Google Ads works as a platform for you, chances are Bing could too. A large proportion of Bing users are 35+ years old, so if your target audience is younger than this then you may want to temper your expectations slightly and really research your audience. If you are looking for a slightly cheaper alternative to Google Ads, then Bing Ads is certainly a potential marketing channel. Despite the lower traffic, the lower amount of competition and better CPC is definitely a plus.   If you are looking to create pay-per-click campaigns that deliver a positive ROI and would like more advice on which ad network you should be using, get in contact with the experts at AdPilot today.