Can Bing Meet with PPC Expectations?

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/DVkUF)
A search summit was held last week by Microsoft in Bellevue Washington. About eighty search experts attended the summit and they were all anxious to learn more about the search products of the huge company. The Search Summit was a combination of the Ad Champs and Search Champs. The goal is to enable SEMs to share and learn new knowledge; and biggest buzz during the summit is the new Bing.

Bing is the newest search engine offered by Microsoft and it is also called ‘decision engine’. As the big company claims, this decision engine can help users in making faster and smarter decisions. The features of Bing deliver the finest results and present them in an organized manner; thereby simplifying the key tasks.

Is it true that Bing can provide a different experience for online researchers or is it simply the rebrand of Live.com? If you try to look into the features of Bing, you can see the big difference. On the left navigation, you will see related searches, video search, and enhanced image. Average searchers will also benefit from the phone number included on the section organic listings. Now, you can easily call customer service when needed.

Microsoft spent $100M for the initial advertising campaigns and it is still paying for the ads to be aired on different programs, starting with The Daily Show.

Historically, the search engines of Microsoft obtained exceptional ROI on the PPC. However, most of the search engines generated low volumes of traffic. Advertisers are now asking if they can expect increased traffic on their PPC advertisements on Bing.

The question will still remain unanswered since Bing has only been on business for several days. Coincidentally, Microsoft also released upgrades to adCenter Desktop. The improvements were much needed for some time now and it’s a good thing that Microsoft has already launched the updates. You can now edit and add targeting settings like daypating, bid boosting, and geo-targeting. These are the same features that Google AdWords Editor lacks at present.

Important features were also launched by Microsoft like placement performance reporting, site exclusion, and site targeting. From the Content Network, advertisers can simple choose an image or text ads and they can also obtain the keyword monetization data through ‘ Ad Intelligence’ tool.

The PPC account’s ROI can be maximized if advertisers work closely with the adCenter account team. Account reps usually make use of internal tools to identify content sites and new keywords which helps in enhancing the account’s performance.

Bing is not the first re-brand of Microsoft. In the past, it has already re-branded its search engines. Many advertisers are skeptical that Bing is different from the rest. So far, Bing has impressed many people since it ranked second place several days ago. The increased traffic and improved features are impressive and some advertisers are already considering PPC placements.

Bing can’t please all internet users and this is also true with Google and Yahoo. PPC marketers will simply have to see if Bing can make considerable changes in terms of ROI.