The Learning Center

Google currently leads the search engine world with 71.11% of the global market share. Bing is the second leader with 10.65% of the market share followed by Baidu (8.73%) and then Yahoo! (7.52%). Unless you're targeting internet users in China, you needn’t concern yourself with Baidu, and you might even consider forgetting about Bing and Yahoo too. This would be a bad decision, especially if you’re considering PPC for your business. Bing and Yahoo!, which displays Bing Ads, account for 20% of the search market. This is millions of people that could potentially see your ads, and there are many more reasons why you shouldn’t neglect Bing PPC ads.

Bing Demographics vs Google Demographics’

Let’s go over the differences between Bing users when compared to Google users. One of the biggest differences is in age and tech know-how. Eighty-seven percent of Bing users are using Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge. If you’re rolling your eyes then you’re probably reading this on Chrome or Firefox. You’re also probably younger, know how to install a internet browser, and aren’t in Bing’s demographic.

Bing’s demographic includes more blue collar than white collar workers who are typically over the age of 34. Simply because of this age range, Bing users are also more likely to have children. This information alone is very useful if your PPC campaign needs to target this demographic.

Bing’s Exclusive Audiences

Not only are there differences in Bing’s users and Google’s users but there are even industry audiences exclusive to Bing over Google. These are users who only use Bing. These users will be completely missed if you are only running a PPC campaign on Adwords.

Users by Audience Who are Exclusive to Bing

• Telecom – 8 Million Users Exclusive to Bing
• Autos – 11 Million Users Exclusive to Bing
• Education – 14 Million Users Exclusive to Bing
• Travel – 17 Million Users Exclusive to Bing
• Business & Finance- 21 Million Users Exclusive to Bing
• Retail – 32 Million Users Exclusive to Bing

If you’re running PPC ads in any of these categories, and you’re only using Adwords, then you are missing millions of potential customers. These customers tend to offer a better ROI also.

Bing Ads Cost-Per-Click Compared to Adwords CPC

It doesn’t take a PPC genius to realize that Google Ads face much more competition when compared to Bing Ads. This is simply because Google has more of the search market. But this is actually to Bing’s benefit. Because Bing Ads face less competition, their cost-per-click tends to be lower than their Google counterparts. This also means Bing Ads tend to place better and have higher click through rates than Google Ads. If this isn’t reason enough to get on Bing Ads then let’s look at the actual benefits the Bing Ads platform has to offer.

Bing Ads Offer More Targeting Options than Adwords 

The Bing platform simply offers better targeting than Google Adwords in its campaign and ad group controls, transparency when it comes to search partner targeting, social extensions, and control of search demographic targeting.

Bing Ads allows for specific targeting of search network, location, ad scheduling, and language at the ad group level. Adwords restricts this option to the ad campaign. In Bing you can easily target a new location or tweak times ads are scheduled to show without having to make a new campaign.

Bing also give users more transparency when it comes to their search partners. Adwords gives you the option to target Google search, or Google search and search partners, but there is no inbetween. Bing allows for the entirety of their network, just Bing and Yahoo!, or just their search partners. Perhaps more importantly, Bing can generate a report on how your ads are doing on the search partner network, and even gives you the option to exclude showing your ads on a particular search partner. It is important to note that Google does do this for ads showing on their display network, but not ads showing on the search network.

Social extensions are offered by both platforms but you’ll quickly see why Bing’s feature is better. Bing Ads will show a company’s twitter followers next to their ads while Adwords will show the number of Google+ followers. Google+, enough said.

Finally, the Bing platform allows for control of search demographics. This is something Google does offer, but, again, only for ads showing on their display network. With Bing, users can control, at the campaign or ad group level, who will see your ads based on gender and age demographics. You can even adjust your bids based on these demographics. This potentially allows you to completely negate a demographic by severely reducing the bid adjustments, bids can be adjusted from -90% to +900%.

Over the past couple years Bing has shed features such as specific device OS targeting and close variant keyword options in order to align with Adwords. However, Bing Ads still offers features that Adwords does not, making it a powerful advertising platform that should not be overlooked for those running PPC campaigns.
 

Sources

Google vs. Bing? Which One Are Your Customers Using?

Yahoo Bing Network Audience Stats That Might Surprise You

7 Ways Bing Ads Beats Google AdWords