Can you believe it’s 2019 and we’re already halfway through January? Time flies when you are busy managing PPC campaigns and keeping up with the latest updates.
Did you know that Bing is coming into its 10th year of operation?
I was on the marketing team (managing paid search) that launched Bing back in 2009 and can remember the audacious goal we had to get to 15 percent market share by 2014. Now, let’s fast forward a decade. Bing Ads ended 2018 with 33.8 percent market share in the U.S. desktop search market, and a combined desktop and mobile market share of over 20 percent. In fact, in October 2018, Microsoft sites handled 24.3 percent of all search queries in the United States. And to top it off, we’re only expecting Bing’s market share across mobile and desktop with the Jan. 17 announcement of Bing’s partnership as the exclusive search provider with Verizon Media which includes Yahoo, AOL and sites such as Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Engadget, Tumblr and more.
Ok, that’s great, but what improvements have you made to make advertising with Bing Ads easier and more successful?
I’m so glad you asked.
Everything we do at Bing Ads has to fulfill one, very important, objective – helping achieve your business results. That means our ad platform needs to help you build better campaigns in less time, it needs to harness the power of artificial intelligence to generate more effective audience marketing, and ultimately help you with powerful, successful ad creation.
We were busy this past year, and have released some key feature developments at Bing Ads that deliver the right results with less effort, more data, and better search marketing solutions. Some of the features and updates we made this year such as Extended Text Ads helped the Bing Ads platform maintain parity with Google Ads, making it easier for you to import campaigns and process updates. Other features such as In-Market Audiences and LinkedIn Targeting were brand new feature releases that you couldn’t find on any other platform. So exactly how many features or updates did we make? Check it out:
So without further ado, let’s dig into some of my personal favorite top 2018 features and releases that happened at Bing Ads.
New featured tools with Bing Ads
Quickly reach customers who are ready to buy with In-Market Audiences.
Using artificial intelligence (AI), Bing Ads is now able to predict and identify audience segments who have shown purchase intent signals within more than 170 In-Market Audience categories. This new functionality is already helping beta-users see a 28 percent higher click-through rate and up to 48 percent higher conversion rates.
Add more value to audience targeting using LinkedIn profile information – exclusive to Bing Ads.
Target users based on their LinkedIn professional profiles, helping you find the right audiences and achieve a return on your ad spend goals. Unique only to Bing Ads, save time by creating campaigns that serve text ads, Dynamic Search Ads and shopping campaigns to customers based on their company, profession and industry. LinkedIn profile targeting adds another layer of information and value to your marketing goals, making it easier than ever to locate and engage your ideal audience.
Automate your tasks with Bing Ads Scripts.
For all of my fellow automation geeks, can I get an AMEN that Bing Ads Scripts is finally here? Bing Ads Scripts will help users reduce time spent performing repetitive and common multi-step tasks that are necessary when managing campaigns, but also a bit of a time suck. Scripts is a new beta feature that lets users access and manage campaigns using simple JavaScript in the Bing Ads browser-based script editor. In other words, this new update to the Bing platform will help users save time and energy without relying on costly technical developers.
Import any Google Merchant Center product offers to the Bing Merchant Center
If you have product ads in your Google Merchant Center, this Bing Ads tool will help you easily import them into your Bing Merchant Center. This updated feature will benefit all our users spend less time maintaining two separate feed files for Google Ads and Bing Ads. By syncing both merchant centers, you can keep all product offers fresh and up to date on both platforms.
Our updates are adding up
At Bing Ads, we are in a state of constant evolution and improvement, always trying to get a little better and do a little bit more to improve the user experience. Along that vein, we’ve redoubled our efforts to bring you new updates and features for Google Import, the system used to import your campaigns from Google Ads to Bing Ads. The latest and greatest updates include:
- The ability to bring more items over from Google Ads such as ten thousand campaigns, one million Ad Groups, five million keyword, four million ads, you get the idea.
- You can now import brand-new items into Bing Ads, such as age and gender targeting and negative keyword lists.
- We are now offering Advanced Import Options, allowing users to select specific items they want to be added, updated, or deleted, all in a simplified manner.
- In Google Import, click on Show Advanced Options to see all the additional items you can include or remove as part of your sync such as ad extensions, targeting settings, status updates, and more.
It’s never been easier to combine advertising efforts and create a multi-pronged campaign that delivers serious results.
Multiple Language Targeting updates
In the past, Bing Ads has only supported language targeting at the ad group-level, causing differences in structure between Google Ad campaigns and Bing Ads. But now, with Multiple Language Targeting, users can expand their global reach by choosing from multiple Bing Ad support languages to target customer at the campaign level. It’s a revelation!
2018 was a big year for Bing and 2019 is setting the stage for even more new features and product advancements, all developed with one purpose in mind – to help our growing advertiser base efficiently manage their campaigns using intelligent audience marketing and powerful ad creations.
Your feedback reshaped Bing Ads in 2018
It’s through the UserVoice feature suggestion forum, that Bing is able to listen to our clients and solve the problems that are most important to you. We listen and use customer feedback to shape and improve every user’s experience. Based on customer feedback in 2018, we built:
- Better tools for understanding your competitors on Bing Ads
- New automated bidding options
- Better support for campaigns that target multiple languages
- New insights into placement of your Shopping Ads
- Easier discovery of hidden volume opportunities for Shopping Campaigns0
- Time-saving ways to manage your budgets and billing
We base many of our focused research and development initiatives on the feedback provided through the Bing Ads Feature Suggestion Forum. Use this space to suggest a new feature, enhancements to an existing feature, or even vote on ideas that others have submitted.
Keep the feedback coming throughout 2019 and in the years to come. Come personally find me at SMX West in San Jose and share your thoughts and suggestions. I’d love to hear them and share them with our marketing and engineering teams. Your thoughts, suggestions and ideas are truly invaluable to all of us at Bing Ads.
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
About The Author
Christi Olson is a Search Evangelist at Microsoft in Seattle, Washington. For over a decade Christi has been a student and practitioner of SEM. Prior to joining the Bing Ads team within Microsoft, Christi worked in marketing both in-house and at agencies at Point It, Expedia, Harry & David, and Microsoft (MSN, Bing, Windows). When she’s not geeking out about search and digital marketing she can be found with her husband at ACUO crossfit and running races across the PacificNW, brewing and trying to find the perfect beer, and going for lots of walks with their two schnauzers and pug.