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Bing Ads vs. Google Ads
Google dominates the search engine market share, with over 90% visibility. Bing has less than 10% market share [source]. Since Bing is the underdog, the masses flock to Google and Bing often gets overlooked.
I’m a firm believer that you should blaze your own trail and it’s often best to take the road less traveled. While Google has obvious upsides, when it comes to advertising for PPC and eCommerce, Bing should not be overlooked. I’m going to explain why you should advertise on Bing for your shopping and PPC campaigns and how this channel can lead to a lower cost per click, a higher conversion rate and a better return on investment. I’ll also discuss some of the downsides to this lesser-used channel.
We practice what we preach here at The Media Captain. Bing has been a superstar for our in-house eCommerce business, DermWarehouse, consistently outperforming Google’s return on ad spend. For The Media Captain, one of our most instrumental clients came from Bing. I’m going to dive deeper into our eCommerce and B2B business and how we leverage Bing for each one.
After reading this article, you’ll have all of the pros and cons of advertising on Bing and you’ll likely agree that this is a channel that’s not to be missed.
Why You Should Advertise on Bing – Pros
Bing Shopping averages a cost per click of $0.33 compared to $0.48 for Google. The average revenue per click for Bing Shopping campaigns is $4.43 whereas Google Shopping averages $3.58 [view more Bing search stats].
While you may not get as many clicks on Bing as you do with Google, the cost is lower and the quality is higher. If you can acquire new customers from Bing (which you can), what do you have to lose?
It’s also really easy to get set-up on Bing Ads. Did you know you can import your existing Google Ads account over to Bing? Below is a video to show you how to easily import your Ads account.
Resource: You can easily import your Google Ads account over to Bing
For DermWarehouse, we typically set up our campaigns on Google and once they are optimized and running well, we import them over to Bing.
I’m a firm believer in diversifying your advertising strategy. If PPC and shopping ads perform well for your business on Google, it’s a no brainer to have a Bing account up and running.
What makes our agency unique is we started a seven-figure in-house eCommerce business. We love Google like a first child but of course, we love all of our children equally. We consider Bing a part of our family!
Google Ads helped us scale our eCommerce operation. We’re able to profitably acquire new customers on Google through Shopping, Search, Dynamic and Display. We started with a modest $500 monthly budget and now spend over $50,000 per month on Google Ads. This has helped us amass over 350,000 customers with a repeat purchase rate north of 30%.
Surprisingly, Bing Ads have always surpassed Google Ads from a return on investment standpoint. We achieve close to a 3:1 ROAS on Bing whereas for Google, we’re closer to a 2:5 return on ad spend. Our cost per click is lower on Bing and we have a higher conversion rate percentage. While we don’t get as much traffic from Bing, it does bring in a lot of new customers and the return almost always beats Google.
Related Blog: What’s a good ROAS for an eCommerce brand?
For DermWarehouse, we’re spending over $5,000 per month on Bing, generating approximately 5,000 clicks and generating nearly $15,000 in revenue. While this is a fraction of the size of ad spend and revenue that goes towards Google, it brings us a lot of new customers at a more profitable price point.
Example Product Search on Bing
Below, you can see that when a search is conducted on Bing for “ClarityRX Sleep it Off Mask” we’re populating first on Shopping and first on the PPC advertisements on Bing.
Example Product Search on Google
When you conduct the same search on Google for “ClarityRX Sleep It Off Mask,” you’ll notice that DermWarehouse isn’t populating. There’s more competition for the search query so we’re not getting the same exposure as we are on Bing.
Related Blog: How to Optimize Google Shopping for a Better ROAS
Less Traffic But Higher Quality
Since there are less people conducting searches on Bing, there’s less competition. When there’s less competition, this leads to a lower cost per click.
For DermWarehouse, we’re able to acquire customers throughout the U.S. This allows our Bing ads to have a wide net in terms of targeting, which is how we’re able to generate nearly 5,000 clicks per month.
If you’re a local business, like a dry cleaner, the search traffic on Bing may be limited. It’s still worthwhile to advertise on Bing though. You never know when a single click can turn into your largest account!
For our agency, The Media Captain, one of our biggest clients came from a Bing PPC advertisement. A large real estate company in Dayton, Ohio clicked on one of our Bing PPC ads. We were running Bing PPC ads when our agency was just starting out, since the cost on Google was more expensive. This real estate client changed the trajectory of our firm. This goes to show that it’s not about volume, it’s about the quality of each click.
Some people don’t know the difference
Many people don’t realize they are searching on Bing versus Google.
Bing is set as the default browser on Microsoft computers. It’s estimated that there are more than 1 billion Windows-powered PCs! This results in a lot of search queries on Bing.
When many people open their default web browser, Bing populates. Someone conducts a search on Bing just like they would on Google. If your advertisement populates, like the examples we provided for DermWarehouse, you can capitalize on this traffic to acquire new customers.
Downsides to Advertising on Bing
As with anything, Bing has its pros and its cons. The biggest downside to Bing ads is that this platform likely cannot stand on its own. If you could only put budget toward one channel, Google would be the easy winner, as there’s just more traffic to be found there. Bing likely would not bring you enough traffic or new customers to be your sole advertising platform.
Another downside to Bing is that their automated bidding strategies do not work very well. For most of the campaigns that we’re running on Google, we use automated bidding strategies such as target ROAS or maximize conversions. We’ve done a lot of experimenting with these on Bing, but this platform just does not seem to have the smarts that Google has. Whenever we import our campaigns over to Bing, we always stick with a manual CPC strategy. This means that we have to put in a little more work to manage these campaigns, since the bidding is not automated.
When you’re advertising on both Google and Bing, you can easily see that Bing always seems to be one step behind Google. This makes sense, but when it comes to cutting edge technology, Google is where it’s at. Everything on Bing just seems slightly less intuitive.
In Closing
Not many people praise Bing. We wanted to write this article to show how Bing paid advertisements have made a difference for our businesses (eCommerce and B2B). It’s not difficult to set-up Bing Ads and will help diversify your advertising strategy. While there are some slight downsides, the pros far outweigh the cons.
What are you waiting for? Import your Google Ads into Bing, set-up a Bing Shopping Feed and start serving ads on Bing!
