Where Bing Ads Are Beating Google

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a post called Where Facebook Ads Are Beating Google. The key area where Facebook is beating Google is in goal identification, right at the start of campaign setup. Bing Ads are beating Google in this way, as well, with their new campaign setup flow:
bing-goal-identification
Like Facebook, Bing is asking advertisers to state their goal right out of the gate. Advertisers are forced to think, before inputting any other information, about what their goal is and their reason for using Bing Ads.

Savvy search engines have finally caught on to what matters, and it isn’t their bottom line. Sure, their bottom line is important – but only if they have advertisers using them. Google may not care, since they’re the big dog on the block right now – but their reign may not last forever. Look at Yahoo. 15 years ago, Yahoo was the most-visited site on the web. They had Overture placing ads in their SERPs. Overture existed before Google Adwords, and was the big dog for a short time.

Not that either Bing or Facebook is going to overtake Google any time soon. But Bing Ads, and Bing/Microsoft, are beating Google in other ways.

Better results.

I’ve long said that results on Bing Ads are better than Google. While not true for every client, in general Bing outperforms Google, both in higher conversion rates and lower CPCs. At Bing Ads Next last week, Rik van der Kooi, Microsoft’s global head of search advertising, said that Bing’s users are better-educated and have higher household incomes than Google’s. And Bing’s market share is at 30% – and has been steadily growing since the launch of the Bing search engine in 2009. Bing can no longer be ignored, at least by advertisers who want to succeed.

Case in point: We landed a new client earlier this year who had been using Google exclusively. We finally convinced them to test Bing, as well. Cost per conversion on Bing was ¼ that of Google. The client was pleasantly shocked. Again, this doesn’t happen for every advertiser, but it didn’t take long to prove to this client that Bing was worth investing in.

Better human interest content on Bing.

We just had a Presidential election here in the US. (No political comments, please!) I enjoyed following the various races on Bing Predicts, which offered projections on all the offices up for grabs. While Bing got the presidential prediction wrong (just like everyone else), the interface was smooth and interesting.

Bing also covers major sports and events such as the Academy Awards, with much more engaging content than Google. Take a look at NFL predictions from Bing:

bing-nfl

Engaging, visual content; game times and predictions by week, and more. I can see at a glance that the Detroit Lions have a 75% chance to beat Jacksonville this week. (Yes, 2016 has gone upside down – the Cubs won the World Series, the Spartans are 3-7, and the Lions are in first place in the NFC Central division. What’s next?!?)

Now take a look at Google:

google-nfl

Ho hum. 10 blue links plus one photo of the Packers. What if you hate the Packers? You’re out of luck. Bing clearly wins with this type of content.

Virtual and mixed reality.

Now I’m not an early adopter of stuff like this. I can barely play Xbox – I leave that to my kids. But I do find virtual reality to be fascinating – and it’s definitely going to impact search in some way.

Microsoft’s Hololens is a fully self-contained computer. You don’t need to connect to your phone or PC, and there are no cables or tethers. Imagine the possibilities of a totally wireless, autonomous mixed reality device.

Now look at Google’s Daydream VR. Everyone was excited about it when it was announced a few weeks ago, but alas:

google-daydream

It only works with the Pixel. I only know one person so far who has a Pixel. Not that that won’t change – it’s a super cool phone – but really? You can’t connect this thing to any other phones or to your computer? Who’s going to buy it?

Certainly, things may change for the Daydream, but Microsoft had the forethought to design their product without such tethers, both physical and wireless, from the start.

Better browser.

All you Chrome lovers, listen up: Microsoft Edge is faster and safer than Chrome, and it uses less battery. 32% less, to be exact. And it blocks malware – something I could have used recently, as I got a virus from something on Firefox.

IE was the whipping boy of browsers – it was slow, didn’t offer extensions or features, and felt old-school. Edge is none of those things. It’s better than Chrome – beating Google yet again.

So should you abandon your Adwords campaigns in favor of Bing Ads? Beating Google is cool, but Bing Ads isn’t there yet. But ignore them at your peril.

What do you think? Is Google vulnerable here? Or will they get a clue and catch back up? Share in the comments!

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Importing AdWords Campaigns to Bing Ads: The Guide

Many advertisers expand their PPC program by by importing their Google AdWords campaigns to Bing Ads. Bing makes it super easy to do so, with import tools in the UI and in Bing Ads Editor.

But many advertisers don’t realize that their job has just started with the import. There are additional steps that need to be taken to get the best possible performance out of Bing Ads.

Lisa Raehsler of Big Click Co has put together an excellent guide to optimizing Bing Ads campaigns after importing from Google AdWords. The guide covers every aspect of optimizing your Bing Ads imports, from search partners to daily budgets to geo-targeting.

If you’re importing Adwords campaigns to Bing Ads, this guide is a must-read. You can read the guide here: Guide-Optimizing-BingAds-From-Adwords.

Disclosure: I’m quoted in the guide. But Lisa did all the work putting it together. Enjoy this valuable resource for importing AdWords campaigns into Bing Ads!

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Bing Ads Next: The Future Of Search

Last week, I had the extreme privilege of attending the third annual Bing Ads Next event. Bing shared their vision for the future of search, along with some big announcements. Here are some of my favorite takeaways from the event.

Bing Ads Editor for Mac

This is by far the top feature request on the Bing Ads User Voice forum, and has been since at least 2012. I had honestly thought it was never going to happen. But it is, and we even got to see a live demo to prove it! More on this huge announcement at Search Engine Land.

Extensions Are King

We saw previews of two new extensions. With Image Extensions, you can add an image to your ads:

image extensions
As we all know, pictures help boost click-through rates, so this is a big deal for advertisers.

We also saw the new ActionLink extensions:

action link extensions
These reminded me of the Facebook call to action buttons, which are quite useful. These are clearly e-commerce focused, with limited options for B2B, but it’s a good start.

Bing User Preference

This isn’t a feature, but it’s super important. One of the biggest comments the folks at Bing hear is, “We get great results from Bing – there just isn’t enough traffic.” That’s definitely true for my clients. Bing is making strides, though:

user preference
According to these stats, more people prefer Bing than Google. Wow.

Bing Predicts Is Growing

I talked about Bing Predicts last year, when it was new. Now, it’s become almost ubiquitous:

bing predicts
It’s scary-accurate, and is something Google doesn’t have at all.

Cool Data on User Intent by Hour

We’ve all made assumptions about when people use different devices, and what times of day the “serious” searches are taking place. Well, Bing has real data on this:

user intent by hour

This is a fascinating chart, especially the shopping portion. Great data to use for dayparting when launching a campaign, or when you don’t have enough of your own data to segment.

The Winding Conversion Path

The journey from initial search to purchase is a circuitous one, for sure:

conversion path

It moves from device to device, and across multiple different search queries. The takeaway for me here was that you need to be present on all devices, and use a variety of keywords to stay in front of your prospects. Remarketing and RLSA don’t hurt, either.

It was a great conference in an intimate setting, and as usual, I learned a lot. To read more about the event, check out this post by Erin Sagin at WordStream.

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Using Bing Ads Intelligence To Improve Quality Score

PPC tools are an invaluable part of everyday life in the PPC world. One tool that serves multiple purposes is the Bing Ads Intelligence Excel plugin tool.

Not only can you use Bing Ads Intelligence for keyword research, but it’s also helpful in improving your quality scores.

You may be wondering how a keyword research tool can help you fix your quality scores. Let’s walk through the process for using Bing Ads Intelligence to improve quality score.

We’ll start with the keyword report shown below.

kw grid
Now, this report will be for Bing Ads data; if you’re like most advertisers, Bing probably only represents about 30% of your PPC traffic. You may be wondering, “Why bother with Bing when most of my traffic comes from Google?”

Well, while there are differences in the quality score algorithm between the two engines, it’s rare that a keyword with a poor quality score on Bing will have a high quality score on Google, and vice versa. For the remainder of this post, that’s our assumption.

Many advertisers have hundreds, if not thousands, of keywords, so prioritizing optimization efforts is a must.

Look at your average quality score and quality impact by campaign. While we know that averages lie, they are a good place to start prioritizing.

The easiest way to get average quality score by campaign is using pivot tables. The pivot table field list will look like this:

pivot field list
The table itself will look like this:

highlighted
The highlighted rows are the campaigns with the worst average quality scores, so these are the ones we’ll focus on. (Note: I removed all keywords with quality scores of 0.)

In looking at the highlighted campaigns, 2 things are clear. First, the campaigns with the lowest average quality score are also the campaigns with the highest average quality impact. No surprise there. Second, the average landing page relevance is lower than the average keyword relevance, not only on the targeted campaigns, but on all campaigns. Now we’re getting closer to the problem!

Let’s go back to our low-QS campaign keyword report again. This time, we’ll isolate the keywords that have poor quality scores. I’m using actual keywords this time to make it easier to follow.

kw list
It’s important to note here that only the overall Quality Score is measured on a scale from 1 to 10. Keyword relevance is assessed by either 1 (Poor), 2 (No Problem), or 3 (Good). Landing page relevance is either 1 (Poor) or 2 (No Problem). So, all of the keywords above have a poor landing page relevance score; the keyword relevance is either “No Problem” or “Good.”

At this point, it would be easy to jump right in with a landing page optimization project. Not so fast! While that is the logical next step, Bing Ads Intelligence can help direct your optimization project.

Bing Ads Intelligence has many useful features, and the first one we’ll use for landing page assessment is the Keywords Categories tool:

kw categories
As I mentioned earlier, the great thing about Bing Ads Intelligence is that it runs right in Excel. We already have our low-QS keywords in Excel, so all we need to do is select the keywords we want to analyze, and click Keyword Categories. (You’ll be asked to sign in with your Bing Ads credentials first.)  The tool will create a new tab called Keyword Categories, and the results look like this:

kw categories result

What does it all mean? Well, you’ll see that most keywords have more than one category listed, which simply means that a single keyword fits in multiple categories.

The “Score” column is an indication of relevance: the higher the score, the more relevant the keyword is to the category.

Since this is an Excel tool, all the cool Excel features apply. Bing has even put the filters in for us! Using Filters, drill down to the top-scoring keywords:

top scoring kws

Now the problem with the landing page is becoming clearer. The most common category for the top-scoring keywords is “Computers_&_Electronics/Internet/Domain_Registration_&_Hosting.” In this example, that doesn’t describe the client’s business or offer accurately (not to mention the fact that domain registration & hosting is a highly competitive vertical). So, one of the goals of landing page optimization should be to make it clear what category the offer (and the company) is in. In other words, improve landing page relevance.

Another feature of Bing Ads Intelligence that will help you optimize your landing page is the Webpage Keywords function.

webpage keywords

To use this feature, paste your landing page URL into Excel, and then click the Webpage Keywords option. As with the Keyword Categories function, the tool will create a new tab and provide keyword suggestions based on webpage elements.

In the case of our client, the webpage keyword suggestions were all over the place:

webpage kws result

Clearly, we need to tighten up the theme of the page.

Of course, we can’t neglect the fact that there is work to be done on the PPC keyword side. Adding negatives, splitting keywords into more tightly-themed ad groups, and eliminating ambiguous keywords should all be on the optimization agenda.

But the great thing about Bing Ads Intelligence is the insight it offers into landing page optimization. How have you used Bing Ads Intelligence? Share in the comments!

Editor’s Note: Portions of this post appeared on Search Engine Watch on January 8, 2013.

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Bing Native Ads – More Loss of Control For PPC Advertisers

Earlier this week, Bing announced the launch of their Native Ads product. Bing Native Ads are ad units that will appear within content on MSN.com and other yet-to-be-determined content-driven sites. Ads will be served based on user search history and page content.

There’s a good overview of what Native Ads are over at Wordstream. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s worth the time to review.

Now, I love Bing Ads. We get great results from Bing, usually at a lower cost than Google. And I’m a huge fan of innovative ad formats. I was super excited about Native Ads – until I found out that they’d be tacked on to our search campaigns.

Advertisers can control bids for Native Ads using bid modifiers, similar to how mobile bids are controlled today. It won’t be possible to run Bing Native Ads in separate campaigns from search, nor will it be possible to exclude placements within the Bing Native Ads network.

Initially, this is probably fine, as MSN is the only site in the network. But you can bet they’ll add AOL and other sites at some point – and every one of these sites is going to perform differently. Sure, we can create native ad units that are different from search ads, but we can’t exclude sites that don’t work, nor can we create different ads for MSN vs. other sites.

When the Bing-Yahoo Search Alliance first launched, I begged them to give us separate bids for Bing and Yahoo traffic, knowing that the two engines have very different audiences. No dice. Now, we’re getting Native Ads whether we want them or not, and our only recourse is to adjust bids via a bid modifier.

I’m not saying Bing Native Ads are going to perform poorly. I haven’t tested them, and I’m sure they’ll perform well for at least some of our clients. But native advertising isn’t search. Even when you layer intent onto the ad serving algorithm, the fact remains that these users are reading content, not actively searching. It’s really a hybrid of search and display.

To the PPC engines, tablets are the same as desktops, and native is the same as search, I guess. One more loss of control for advertisers.

At least I still have Van Halen to console me.

What do you think about Bing Native Ads? Are you excited to test them, or are you concerned about the lack of control? Share in the comments!

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3 PPC Features That Aren’t Ready For Prime Time

There’s an old adage in the car-buying world that advises people never to buy a new model car in its first year. Why? The manufacturer hasn’t worked all of the bugs out yet, so you’re likely to encounter down time while the car is in the shop.

The same thing is true of technology: look at the iPhone 6 and all the gaffes it experienced early on. And Windows 8 is universally hated, to the point that Microsoft skipped Windows 9 and went right on to making Windows 10.

In PPC, we also come across new features that aren’t ready for prime time. Here are the top 3 PPC features that might have benefited from a bit more beta testing.

The New Adwords Editor

Last month, Adwords held yet another “announcement” event. One of the highlights, in addition to one of the speaker’s sweaters, was the rollout of a new Adwords Editor.

The current editor, while a must-have tool for PPC managers, has limitations. It doesn’t support shopping campaigns well. It doesn’t allow copying across accounts. It doesn’t have an “undo” button.

The new Adwords Editor v.11 has all of those features, and more. But it’s missing some key elements, too. And it’s buggy. Here are just some of the issues that PPC Chat users have reported:

•    Won’t load/ freezes
•    Error messages
•    Missing metrics
•    No callout extensions
•    Keyword planner is gone
•    No click data for sitelinks

I was all set to download the new Adwords Editor, and then I started seeing these reports. I decided to hold off. Perhaps Adwords is using the PPC community as one big beta test?

Bing Ads Universal Event Tracking (UET)

I was excited to get started with this much-ballyhooed tracking tool from Bing Ads. It’s called “universal” because it was supposed to be one tracking code for all accounts across an agency: “In Bing Ads, tags are defined at the customer level. This means that you can use the same tag to define and track goals across all your accounts and campaigns. This flexibility allows you to instrument your site just once (when you create your first goal) and keep defining new goals to measure without ever needing to add another tag to your site.”

In reality, while that is technically true, in practice it’s not that simple. First of all, you’ll find the tracking code in different places, depending on whether your client’s account is a “built in” account or a “linked” account.

I’m not even sure what that means, except it means I can’t see the UET code for all my clients when logged in to our agency Bing Ads account. Apparently, for some accounts, I have to log in to the child account. Which I didn’t even know existed for Bing Ads. And I certainly don’t have logins for any of these child accounts.

To make it even more interesting, Bing is retiring the old conversion tracking scripts effective in April. So we’ve all got less than 3 months to figure this out. I’m a little scared.

LinkedIn Ads

I wrote about LinkedIn back in November 2013 and the fact that they didn’t want my money. Merry Morud wrote about their terrible interface back in July 2013.

Here we are 18 months later, and the only thing that’s changed is their timeout – it takes a little longer than 5 minutes now to time out, and it doesn’t log you out when you’re actively working in the interface.

Every other complaint that Merry made about their interface still exists. It’s crazy that LinkedIn, with its $8-10 CPCs, hasn’t done a single thing in a year and a half to improve their UI. Twitter and Facebook have made huge leaps ahead, while LinkedIn sits and languishes with its awful UI and expensive clicks.

One thing that really bugs me about LinkedIn Ads is that there is no way to keep sponsored posts from displaying to people who already follow you, nor from your own employees. We’ve had clients who’ve ended up paying (at $8-10 a crack) for their own employees to “like” their sponsored posts. Crazy. The LinkedIn Ads UI is definitely not ready for prime time.

Found any other PPC features that aren’t ready for prime time? Share in the comments!

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Scaaary-Cool News From Bing Ads Next

Last week, I attended the second annual Bing Ads Next conference at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, WA. Like last year’s event, it provided a look into what’s on the horizon for Bing Ads.

It was a great conference filled with knowledge-sharing and networking. I love the fact that Bing is listening to us – and they’ve really stepped up the pace at which they release new features. Think back to last year at this time, and all the issues you probably had: using the online UI and Editor, dealing with weird errors and login troubles, and other challenges. It seems like Bing Ads released a record number of updates this year, to the point at which they’re pretty close to Google in terms of features, and are ahead of them in others.

For a recap of some of the cool stuff that was announced last week, check out this post on Universal Event Tracking and this one on customer focus.

I love hearing about the latest and greatest when it comes to search engine marketing. One of the best speakers of the one-day event was Stefan Weitz, Director of Search at Microsoft. He did a demo of new Bing technology that can anticipate and predict a searcher’s actions without query input, based on the context of their interaction. Microsoft uses reactive processing to incorporate the knowledge that’s already out there, such as flight schedules and traffic reports, and combine it with what they know about you as a user. They can then offer suggestions tailored to you as an individual – going beyond the 10 blue links ranked by a single algorithm.

Stefan showed other cool technology, such as Cortana and its natural language learning abilities, which make it more like talking to another person instead of a search engine. In the example he demoed, he searched for “barbecue,” and the system showed Korean BBQ restaurants nearby. Think about that for a minute: “barbecue” is a vague term that could mean lots of things: a barbecue grill, pulled pork, a party you’re attending, or the Korean variety. Because Cortana knew Stefan’s preferences, it showed Korean restaurants. Pretty nifty.

He also showed us the predictive capabilities of Bing. Bing Predicts looks at things like elections and NFL game predictions and provides odds, of sorts. Bing predictions go beyond exit and phone polls – this is actual forecasting based on millions of bits of data. Here’s an example:

bing predicts election results

Here’s another one for the NFL:

bing predicts nfl results
Wow. Here’s more information on how it works.

There’s no doubt: this is super cool. It’s also scary to me.

Think about the election predictions for a minute. In the screen shot above, it shows that Gary Peters is going to win the Michigan Senate race in a landslide. (Remember, this is based on data Bing has, including who’s talking about the candidates, how much they’ve spent on advertising, sentiment, news articles, and other factors.)

Now, let me tell you a little bit about this Senate race.

These two are vying for a spot that’s been held by Carl Levin for the past 35 years. I don’t remember a time when Carl Levin wasn’t in office. This is huge for the state of Michigan and for the US Senate. We need as many people in the state to come out and vote as possible.

And yet, if I were thinking about voting for Terri Lynn Land, and I saw this, would I bother to go vote, seeing that she has no chance? Would I be tempted to just sit at home and watch the Bing Predicts data instead of watching TV coverage of the election? Would I decide my vote doesn’t matter?

I personally won’t decide any of these things, but I fear others will.

And what about the NFL example? Will people go out and put their money on the Bengals in Vegas because Bing Predicts gives them a 76% chance of winning? Is that easy money for me? Should I quit my job and just start using Bing Predicts to place bets?

Again, I wouldn’t do any of those things – but others might.

Don’t get me wrong – this stuff is incredible. Just 10 years ago, who would have dreamed of search going this direction? We are getting very close to being able to say, Star Trek-like, “Computer, report!” and getting back actual, meaningful info. (I’d love to do that for my weekly and monthly PPC reports!) We can get our email on a watch. It’s awesome.

And yet, what are the social implications of all this? I’m a bit scared that our elections might be predicted by a search engine.

What about you? Is this cool, and I need to just tell everyone to get off my lawn? Or are you just a little concerned about the machines predicting everything? Share in the comments!

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Bing Ads Device Targeting: Never Say Never

I’m sure by now you’ve heard the news that came out of Bing Ads on Wednesday: they’re making some changes to device targeting to, well, be more like Google. The changes don’t go into effect until September, so advertisers have time to plan. There will be an initial phase that combines desktop and tablets, and then a second phase that eliminates separate campaigns for devices altogether, moving instead to the bid modifier model that Google has – except, Bing will have a tablet modifier.

Here’s what campaign structure will look like when all is said and done, and how Bing Ads device targeting compares to Google:

bing campaigns

Needless to say, the news has not been well-received by the PPC community. Personally, I appreciate the fact that Bing is giving us a lot of notice about the changes – more than Google gave us for Enhanced Campaigns. And I love the fact that they’ll be including a tablet modifier – something we have repeatedly requested of Google, to no avail.

But what is so disappointing about the announcement is that it basically negates the bold statements made by Bing Ads in the past. Just last year, Bing Ads wrote a manifesto saying “We Believe In Advertiser Choice.” They made the point in multiple speaking engagements; I remember a Bing Ads team member at SMX Advanced last year saying they would continue to offer advertisers control over devices – and the room erupted in applause.

This was really a differentiator for Bing Ads. For advertisers with a discrete mobile budget, Bing Ads was their only choice. For advertisers who needed to control tablet spend, Bing Ads was their only choice. Come September, those choices will start to go away.

I guess all good things must come to an end. In PPC, things are constantly changing – sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. But it’s a little frustrating to see Bing Ads do an about face on something they repeatedly said they’d never do. Never say never, I guess.

I had the privilege of being on an “advanced notice” call about the changes that took place prior to the announcement. Several other industry leaders were also on the call. The feedback on the call was universally negative. Several people brought up concerns about the model, especially the fact that the tablet modifier starts at -20%. Why not -100% or at least -50%?

Bing claims that their research shows that the average advertiser sees results 20% worse on tablets. I’m sure that’s true. But how many of us are average advertisers? As the saying goes, averages lie – especially in this case.

So why did they do it? While I don’t know the real reason, I think it comes down to efficiency. Enhanced campaigns threw us all for a loop last year, Bing Ads included. They did a miraculous job of maintaining the ability to import Google campaigns in the face of Enhanced Campaigns.

But I believe it’s costing them. The fact that things aren’t exactly the same as Google causes issues with campaign imports. They realize that for people to really embrace Bing, they need to have as much parity as possible with Google. I’d be willing to bet that the lack of parity is costing them big, both in lost advertiser dollars and in development costs trying to maintain a system that doesn’t match Google’s exactly.

So did Bing Ads make the right decision? Only time will tell. I still love many things about Bing: better results in many cases than Google, lower CPCs, amazing reps and community managers who truly care about the PPC community, and many tools that are better than Google, including a tablet modifier. Who knows – maybe this will spur Google to offer a modifier as well!

What do you think about the announcement? Does it really mess up your campaigns, or doesn’t it matter? Do you like the way it was handled? Share in the comments!

 

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What’s Up With Bing Ads in 2013?

One of the most-viewed posts on this blog is one I wrote in September 2012 called What’s Up With Bing Ads? In that post, I commented on their constant rebranding, interface and editor issues, and support challenges. That post is consistently in the top 10 most-viewed posts on my blog.

Let’s fast forward 13 months and see what’s changed. I just got back from Bing Ads Next, an exclusive event held at Microsoft’s Redmond, WA campus. About 20 of the biggest names in PPC were there, and we spent a day seeing Bing Ads’ version of the future of search.

The highlights of the event have already been covered elsewhere, so I won’t rehash them here.  Instead, let’s review what’s changed with Bing Ads over the past year or so.

Online UI and Editor improvements.

In my 2012 post, I complained about issues with the online UI: it timed out too fast and, despite its overhaul, was still clunky to navigate.

In my opinion, most of the interface issues have since been fixed. It no longer times out after 15 minutes – I’ve been able to stay logged in most of the workday. The import function from Google seems to work well (more on this in a minute). The reporting interface is very fast, and in some ways is better than Google’s.

All that said, there are still niggling things missing from the Bing Ads online UI. During the Bing Ads Next feedback session, Matt Van Wagner said what we were all thinking: Why doesn’t the online UI show conversion rate? It’s 2013, for crying out loud – this is a must-have metric and why it’s not available in Bing Ads can only be a gross oversight.

I won’t even get into the login and account creation issues. The Bing Ads team has heard the PPC community loud and clear on this one. Let’s hope there’s a fix in place before this becomes mandatory in 2014.

Let’s talk about Bing Ads Editor for a second. I use Editor all the time, and it’s improved a lot over the past year, too. The import from Google function is nearly flawless. Editor stayed on par with Google’s move to Enhanced Campaigns – and I can only imagine what a curve ball that was to the Bing Ads development team. The fact that they were able to offer the same features as Google, with the same timing, is a Herculean feat of engineering.

But Bing Ads Editor continues to have silly bugs in it, too. The most recent one is that changes you’ve posted still show bolded in Editor, as if they didn’t post. And, only some of them show up this way. So it’s not clear whether all of your changes posted or not – you’ll have to go look them up in the online UI to be sure.

Bing Ads Support.

Here’s where Bing Ads really shines – far outshines Google and their joke that passes as support. When was the last time Google invited a bunch of PPC influencers to the GooglePlex to talk about Adwords? Anyone? Bueller?

My Bing Ads rep was at all the social functions held during Bing Ads Next. He’s a true partner in helping us succeed, and is knowledgeable and responsive. The weird support issues that I outlined in my 2012 post have, thankfully, gone away. Bing Ads Next attendees universally praised Bing Ads support, both their assigned reps and those who man the Bing Ads Twitter account.

So What’s Really Next for Bing Ads?

Only time will tell. I liked a lot of the new things we saw at the event. I love the fact that Bing Ads is listening to us.

But one comment I heard this week is that there was a little too much talking and not enough listening at the event. Bing, if you’ve brought in what amounts to the best minds and biggest influencers in search, ask them questions! Spend twice as much time listening as you do talking! Learn from them! Don’t lecture them about stuff that they already know. Show them more new concepts and ask them what they think!

Amid rumors that Yahoo wants out of the Bing Ads deal, I don’t think any of us truly knows what’s next for Bing Ads. At its core, Microsoft is a software developer, not a search innovator. Their pace is too slow and their products too bloated to keep up with Google. But I love that they’re trying. With advertiser support that’s far superior to Google, and with better ROI nearly across the board, I still think they have a chance.

What do you think? Is Bing Ads going in the right direction, or are they doomed? Share in the comments!

 

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Bing Ads Is Like A Second Language

No matter how many languages you speak, chances are you only have one native tongue. Even children who are raised bilingual probably have one language they prefer speaking.  For those who learned a second language later in life, communication and understanding can be challenging at times. You can speak and understand the second language, and as you use it you get more fluent, but it’s still easier to speak your first language. You’ll probably get tripped up on idioms and idiosyncrasies in the second language, too.

Bing Ads feels like a second language to many PPC’ers, with its own idioms and idiosyncrasies. Here are a few that can be hard to understand.

Different Targeting Methods

I actually like the fact that you can set targeting at the ad group level in Bing Ads. It’s precisely the kind of control that we PPC’ers like. But like a favorite expression in a second language, it’s hard to remember exactly how to put the pieces together.

Also, sometimes targeting doesn’t import nicely from Adwords. And let’s face it – most of us create campaigns in Adwords and then import them to Bing. Adwords is our first language, so we draft everything there and then hit the “translate” button (in this case, the “Import from Google” button).

Different Negative Keyword Matching

Well, negative keyword matching isn’t really different in Bing Ads. We just have fewer options. Bing only has negative phrase match and negative exact match. There is no negative broad match. Since Bing’s traffic is usually more qualified, having fewer negative match options is ok; but we’re just used to having another way to “say” it, if you will.

Those Pesky Parameters

Parameters in Bing Ads remind me of that weird “S” in German that looks like a “B.” (I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t even know what that’s called. I took Spanish in school.)

Parameters are actually really cool and allow advertisers to do things that you can’t do in Google. But they’re so unfamiliar to most PPC’ers that they don’t get used. I’d guess that English speakers writing in German forget to use that funny S, too.

Technical Issues

Nothing is more frustrating than technical problems. Just ask the zillions of people who tried to download iOS7 this week.

Adwords has their share of technical problems, for sure. (Red bar of death, anyone?) But when Bing Ads has them, the community goes crazy.

I’ve seen many examples of people having trouble downloading the new Bing Ads Editor. It’s weird, because I downloaded it earlier this week and haven’t had any trouble with it. Nonetheless, Bing doesn’t get any slack here. In a way, it’s unfair to Bing. It reminds me of a speaker who’s using a second language, complaining that others didn’t understand him. But it’s still frustrating when a new feature or release is announced and then doesn’t work.

But Bing Ads is a language worth learning.

Remember those old Avis ads, where they crowed about being #2 and trying harder? That’s Bing. They know they have a long way to go before they catch Google, and they’re working like crazy to not only catch up, but offer additional value.

First of all, the newly-released Bing Ads Editor is much more like Adwords Editor. They took out all the “foreign language” and it looks and feels more familiar. It’s faster and smoother to use.

Bing hasn’t made the dreadful switch to Enhanced Campaigns, and they’ve promised not to. I can’t tell you how happy I am about that.

And Bing Ads still offers mobile-only campaigns, as well as targeting for different mobile operating systems.

I firmly believe that Bing is a language worth learning and speaking.

What about you? Are you learning to speak Bing Ads? Or is your first language, Adwords, your best friend? Share in the comments!

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