In the world of Paid Search advertising, Google AdWords dominates nearly nine tenths of the search market in the UK. Many UK advertisers consider Pay-per-Click advertising as being synonymous with Google AdWords – but what about Yahoo and Bing? Can they deliver a worthwhile return-on-investment?
In truth, Bing and Yahoo! search engines can play an important role in the Search Engine marketing mix. Together they provide access to 45 million internet users who exclusively use Yahoo! Bing, representing around 10% of the market- not a figure to be sniffed at.
Differences between AdWords and Bing Ads
The main difference between the two advertising platforms (other than audience size) is the demographic of target users. For example, research suggests that Yahoo! and Bing users are predominantly females and/ or over the age of 45 in comparison to Google’s younger audience. This means sharper, more targeted messages for marketers on the Yahoo! Bing network.
Budgets
In regards to budgeting, Bing Ads offers users a maximum monthly budget, unlike Google whereby marketers need set rules to cap spend. For companies that don’t experience seasonal spikes in traffic or other fluctuations, this option is useful for controlling the overall campaign spend.
Minimum Bids
One really important feature is that the minimum bids for keywords diverge between platforms with Yahoo! Bing accepting much lower minimum keyword bids. However, there are fewer impressions received in comparison to the offering from Google Adwords: impression share is approximately 76-90% less.
Ads + Keywords
Whilst AdWords campaigns can be imported into Bing Ads, the ad text formatting is different between platforms; Google provides two lines for descriptive text whereas Bing Ads has a longer text line of up to 71 characters (see below). Negative keywords also default to phrase match in Bing Ads whereas they are set as Broad in AdWords.
Google Text Ad
Bing Text Ad
Benefits of aligning Bing with Google
Although Yahoo! Bing has a smaller market share in comparison to Google, the average cost-per-click of keywords is 50-70% less. In addition, there is approximately 36% less competition on Yahoo! Bing. For small companies with a reduced budget, Yahoo! Bing therefore provides an economical solution to bring to market new products and services.
For large companies wanting to broaden their reach, the lower CPC averages allow a broad-match strategy to be deployed at scale, without the same tight parameters required in Google Adwords to curb the spend.
Another benefit of using Yahoo! Bing for paid advertising is their dedicated customer service department. Google will contact and advise customers of AdWords who spend $500,000 per year, at least, compared to Yahoo! Bing’s criteria of $500 per month. For small companies who are either inexperienced in paid advertising, or have limited budgets, Yahoo! Bing is great option.
Summary
There’s no denying that if you want to reach out to a large audience via PPC, Google AdWords offers superior market share; the paid search impressions on Google increased by roughly 38% between 2013 and 2014 demonstrating that the industry is booming and shows no sign of slowing down.
However, if you’re looking for highly targeted traffic with reduced competition and click-prices, Bing Ads should not be overlooked.