Bing Ads will Implement 3 Important Strategies this Year to Increase its Market Share

When we take global online ads market, it is well-known that majority of the market share is held by Google Ads, Bing Ads and Yahoo Ads in second and third places respectively. For the past few years, Microsoft’s Bing search engine has been trying to make its advertising platform more business-friendly just like Google is doing. Recently, the head of product marketing for Bing Ads, Steve Sirich shared some interesting news in the Bing’s official blogsite about the rollout of new features such as the addition of native ads on msn.com.

According to Sirich, the main focus of Bing Ads this year is to focus more on supporting consumer productivity and it has been reported in many news sites that for the past few months Microsoft has been planning to combine its search platform throughout the company’s flagship products such as MS Office and Xbox, thereby making Bing less of a destination and more platform. Microsoft’s quarterly results in 2014 have been positive with 23 percent growth due to increase in query volume and higher revenue per search. Sirich said that his team at Bing is currently focusing on enhancing targeting, speed and ad formats in 2015. He mentioned the 3 key initiatives that will be implemented this year for increasing its ads market share.

Msn.com getting a Native Advertising Touch

Sirich says that his team at Bing is currently planning to beta test Bing Ads-induced native advertising on msn.com. Driving the idea of Bing   Ads as an intent network, the ad targeting will pull intent from Bing Ads and extent that into relative programming on msn.com. Doing this will provide more, relevant volume and be great connection for online advertisers. This somewhat similar to Yahoo’s streamlined ads which are served through its Gemini platform. The beta test will begin in the second of this year and according to Bing, its native advertising will expand to mobile in the near future. It could make for a smooth transition for current advertisers and provide new advertisers added incentive to get on the platform, if Bing Ads make it easy for advertisers to test the native ads within its existing interface and the intent signals and targeting prove effective. It is certainly a way to answer calls for more volume and get on the native ads bandwagon in a way that internet search giant Google so far has not.

Roll Out of Bing’s Mobile Ads Extensions

According to Sirich, Bing will begin to roll out mobile app extensions in March 2015 on mobile devices. The mobile app extensions will automatically target to a user’s iOS, Android or Windows Phone device allowing users to download the app after clicking on the extension. Also, product ads are coming to mobile devices later this year, extending beyond desktop and tablet platforms. Sirich also mentions about additional app extensions to be introduced to smartphones. Microsoft says that search and click volume from smartphones and tablets have increased to double-fold year over year on the Yahoo-Bing search network.

Universal Event Tracking and Remarketing

It was in last October when Bing Ads introduced the Universal Event Tracking (UET) that enabled online advertisers to set up goal tracking and enables cross-device tracking with user IDs, and it also makes retargeting possible. When it comes to remarketing, Bing Ads will first focus on search remarketing and in the next week, Microsoft’s search advertising platform will begin to handle bid boosting with a select set of partners. Also, advertisers can expect to see more features later this year and that they are hoping to see more advancement here beyond bid boosting. According to many industry experts, this is an area in which Google has made its presence for the past few years, and advertisers are waiting to see how long Bing can make its presence in native and display advertising using Microsoft’s MSN platform.

According to many market research surveys, US market share of Bing Ads is improving year-by-year and it is due to Bing’s PPC and CTR strategies that are becoming more competitive to Google Adwords and Yahoo Ads.