Why You Should Be Advertising on Bing Search Engine

Marketing Advice - 10.03.17

You have probably been hearing a lot more about Microsoft’s Bing Search Engine lately. The reason for this is that, although it is still small when compared to Google, it is a growing platform and is in many cases a must-have in your digital strategy. In fact, with 15 million searches and 1 million unique searches monthly, Bing has 8.8% of the Irish Market Share. With Bing having a 20.5% share in the UK we expect this to be reflected in the Irish market.


With 5 billion searches per month, the Bing audience has 524 million unique users including 59 million users around the world that do not use Google at all – this statistic definitely should not be ignored. Besides, on average, Bing searchers have 20% higher purchasing power than the average internet searcher.

Not Convinced Yet?

There are a lot of people out there that are not sure if they should be advertising on Bing, but what does advertising on the said platform actually mean? We can break it down into the following;

  • lower competition

  • lower CPC (cost-per-click),

  • better ad position

  • higher CTR (click-through rate)

  • better value for money

Microsoft has put in a lot of effort to ensure the transition to Bing PPC is as easy as possible. If you are already running PPC campaigns you are most likely to be advertising on Google so Bing allows you to transfer those campaigns directly into their platform, making the setup process for the ads much quicker.

Where Is Bing doing It Better than Google?

From our own experience, there are a couple of areas where we think Bing is doing better than Google:

1. Targeting

On Bing, it is possible to set up the targeting at Ad Group level whereas in Google it is only possible at a Campaign level. It is also possible to control which genders, age groups, and other demographics see your search ads. On Google, you can only do this with Display Ads.

2. Ad Visibility

Google recently removed their sidebar ads whereas Bing not only has these but they also have Extended Text Ads. This, as well as the top 3 ads being duplicated to show on the bottom of the page, brings more visibility to your ad.

3. Ad Extensions

Bing, similarly to Google, has regular ad extensions such as site links and callouts but it has something that Google doesn’t: Image Extensions. The benefit of this is that your ad can be more visual and grab the user’s attention.

We, at Together Digital, are looking forward to seeing what changes Bing will bring and how we can apply them to our clients. So if you’re thinking of adding Bing to your current PPC campaigns, or simply wondering what PPC can do for your business, feel free to get in touch with our digital marketing team.