BingAds: Key New Launches And Developments Reviewed

According to recent data published by Bing, the BingAds Network unique searchers spend 44% more online than Google searchers on a global scale. With 3 billion monthly searches across Europe and 840 million searches per month taking place in the UK alone, BingAds market share is likely bigger than we all think, at Ingenuity Digital we want to make sure that our clients are not missing out on any opportunities.

Here is a summary of some key new launches within BingAds which we have already started implementing and trialling on our clients’ accounts.

Period Comparison Reporting

We were beyond excited in the PPC team when we first heard about this long awaited release. Being able to do a side-by-side comparison of an account’s performance metrics between any two date ranges is one of the quickest and easiest ways to evaluate current performance against performance from previous periods of time. This is every PPC expert’s bread and butter and is carried out on an ongoing basis to help us decide where we need to focus our optimisation efforts.

 Structured Snippets

Structured Snippet Extensions are aimed at providing potential customers with even more information or – as BingAds puts it – ‘more context’ on certain aspects of an advertiser’s products and services. A structured snippet comprises of a header and a list of 3 to 10 values which correspond to the pre-defined header. For example, we use the header “Destinations:” for all our travel industry clients and values like “Europe, South Africa, America, Australia” to let searchers know about the destinations available on the clients’ websites. Unlike sitelink extensions, this extension is not clickable and, just like other extensions, it appears beneath the ad description.

Callout Extensions

The BingAds family of ad extensions recently welcomed the addition of this ad extension type which allows us to highlight specific products, services, offers or unique selling points by placing customisable bullet points beneath our clients’ ads. Callout extensions serve alongside the other ad extensions and just like Structured Snippets they are not clickable.  Adding Callouts to all our client accounts means that when their search ads show on one of the top positions they are now larger in size, thus taking up more space on the search results. This definitely makes the use of callout extensions a no-brainer, right?

Review Extensions

Previously not available in BingAds, review extensions have now been rolled out across the UK accounts enabling our clients to build trust with potential customers by adding a positive review from a trusted 3rd party source beneath their ads. Like Callout Extensions and Structured Snippets these are non-clickable extensions and serve alongside the other ad extensions applied to the ad group or campaign. Given that some of our clients are proud winners of multiple awards (which in turn, makes us proud of them!) we were very excited to implement the Review Extensions as soon as they become available.

Expanded Text Ads

Available in AdWords since July 2016 the new longer text ad format became available for testing in BingAds campaigns a couple of months ago, with the aim of facilitating compatibility between the two platforms. With the ETAs, BingAds embraces the trend of providing an improved text ad experience that provides more information to the customer about their destination. Theoretically, this should mean higher click-through-rates and traffic levels to the advertisers’ websites, however as we are still testing this ad format we will probably have to update you on the results in a future post.

Expanded Device Targeting

After hearing advertisers’ feedback about device targeting, BingAds have decided to give us more control in setting bid adjustments by device which is fantastic. What this means is that we are now able to manage the BingAds campaigns more effectively across each device type. Most importantly, we are now able to target tablets separately from computers with different bid adjustments which is music to the ears of anyone who has previously felt powerless to the poor performance of table devices!

In addition to the above, we are holding our breath and waiting impatiently for the full release of the following new features which are currently in pilot:

• Labels – Used by account managers to organise selected campaign elements into meaningful groups which allows for a quick and easy filtering and reporting process. This is a life-changing feature which we make extensive use of in AdWords so we are literally counting down the days to its full release!
• Shared Budgets – When this becomes available account managers will be able to use them so that a single daily budget can automatically be distributed across multiple BingAds campaigns.