BING ADS
What's the difference between Bing Ads and Google Ads?
Similarities
Firstly, understand what's the same.
People use Google or Bing for virtually identical reasons - they want to find something.
While Bing has about 3.5% of the search market share in NZ (June 2023), it has around 8.7% of the market in USA as Microsoft expands Microsoft Edge, Windows, Outlook, XBox and other parts of their ecosystem.
Bing is baked-in as the default search tool, so many people are becoming comfortable with using it.
Bing, and Bing Ads have adopted a Me Too approach, with the user experience and advertising package being as closely aligned to Google as the lawyers allow.
In our experience, the post-click behaviour (ie sales, leads, downloads or signups) is almost identical to Google Ads.
If anything, traffic from Bing Ads tends to have a higher conversion rate than traffic from Google Ads.
Differences
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Size - unsurprisingly Bing is far smaller in NZ, although it has a much larger market share in the US and to a lesser extent, Australia and the UK. Bing also powers Yahoo and AOL Search.
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Cost - this is a key point. The significantly lower number of advertisers on Bing means a less competitive auction process and lower CPCs. Given the similar conversion rate, this usually equates to a lower cost per conversion.
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Competition - not only is your ad competing with other advertisers, on Google Ads it is competing with organic search, Google Shopping and multiple other elements on the page. Bing's search results page differs to Google's, with fewer elements and fewer local results, so your Bing ad may stand out very well.
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Boomers - we have noticed that Bing users are often slightly older people who have upgraded their PC or laptop and are not technically savvy enough to change default settings. This demographic is often likely to be more wealthy and more likely to own their home, so it appealing to clients selling premium products, home repair services, insurance and so on.
Optimisation
Running Google Ads and Bing Ads campaigns side by side is a no brainer.
You will get the quality and quantity of visitors you need.