In an online advertising ecosystem dominated by Google’s multi-billion dollar machine, competitors like Microsoft’s Bing and others can feel hard-pressed to compete. Bing however is working on being more responsive to their search advertisers and has implemented some changes.
Microsoft’s Dare Obasanjo recently acknowledged on the Bing Ads blog a number of recurring requests from customers, with feedback coming from sources like Twitter, blog commentary, and online forums.
“This feedback often contains great ideas,” Obasanjo wrote. He detailed a number of these in his post, citing over 60 changes over the course of a year that included interface redesigns and other functionality tweaks and updates.
Some changes should help advertisers see faster report data turnaround and better reporting on their pay per click ads, which appear on both Bing and Yahoo search pages. For marketers who wanted to be able to copy negative keywords across ad groups, this is now a feature.
Performance metrics included return on advertiser spend and conversion rates. Advertisers should also see quality scores when viewing keyword distribution graphs. And at a basic level of functionality, the latest version of the Bing Ad Editor should be demonstrating faster upload and download speeds.
A cursory look at the comScore monthly qSearch rankings for January 2014 demonstrated why Bing should continue to listen well to their advertiser base. Google takes in roughly two-thirds of the US search market, while Microsoft and Yahoo search, served by Bing’s ad engine, reaches under 29 percent.
While it’s difficult to compete on the numbers, Bing should offer the best experience possible for their advertisers, and those customers should keep asking for high quality features and service.
