{"id":8050,"date":"2023-02-07T13:13:31","date_gmt":"2023-02-07T13:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/07\/microsoft-ads-in-2023-key-areas-to-leverage-test-and-optimize\/"},"modified":"2023-02-07T13:13:31","modified_gmt":"2023-02-07T13:13:31","slug":"microsoft-ads-in-2023-key-areas-to-leverage-test-and-optimize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/07\/microsoft-ads-in-2023-key-areas-to-leverage-test-and-optimize\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Ads in 2023: Key areas to leverage, test and optimize"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Google\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/google-ads-updates-2022-good-bad-jury-still-out-390323\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">hard push into machine learning and automated bidding<\/a> \u2013 and away from more manually controllable optimizations \u2013 builds a sense of exasperation for experienced PPC marketers.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/googles-remove-redundant-keywords-recommendations-have-changed-390939\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">January revision<\/a> to the \u201cremove redundant keywords\u201d recommendations, where they announced the removal of redundant exact and phrase match keywords in favor of broad match, was an aggressive example of that trend.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And it\u2019s made some of us wonder if it\u2019s time to reconsider a long-time little sibling of the paid search world, <a href=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/microsoft-is-improving-its-ad-platform-heres-why-brands-should-give-it-a-shot-in-2023-390694\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Microsoft Advertising<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In late 2022, Microsoft announced its <a href=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/microsoft-is-planning-to-double-the-size-of-its-ad-business-to-20-billion-389796\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ambitious goals<\/a> for capturing a greater share of brand advertising budgets.<\/p>\n<p>With such a promising prospect, let\u2019s look at Microsoft Ads (or Bing Ads, as most PPC marketers still fondly call it) in relation to Google \u2013 including advantages, disadvantages, and opportunities for the platform to make some gains in market share.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_81 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-grey ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><a href=\"#\" class=\"ez-toc-pull-right ez-toc-btn ez-toc-btn-xs ez-toc-btn-default ez-toc-toggle\" aria-label=\"Toggle Table of Content\"><span class=\"ez-toc-js-icon-con\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/07\/microsoft-ads-in-2023-key-areas-to-leverage-test-and-optimize\/#What_advantages_does_Microsoft_search_offer_over_Google_for_PPC_experts_right_now\" >What advantages does Microsoft search offer over Google for PPC experts right now?<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/07\/microsoft-ads-in-2023-key-areas-to-leverage-test-and-optimize\/#What_disadvantages_persist_for_Microsoft_Advertising\" >What disadvantages persist for Microsoft Advertising?<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/07\/microsoft-ads-in-2023-key-areas-to-leverage-test-and-optimize\/#When_and_why_should_advertisers_consider_investing_and_testing_more_on_Microsoft_Advertising\" >When (and why) should advertisers consider investing and testing more on Microsoft Advertising?<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/07\/microsoft-ads-in-2023-key-areas-to-leverage-test-and-optimize\/#Where_should_Microsoft_focus_on_improving_to_compete_with_Google\" >Where should Microsoft focus on improving to compete with Google?<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-5\" href=\"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/07\/microsoft-ads-in-2023-key-areas-to-leverage-test-and-optimize\/#Dont_overlook_Microsoft_Ads\" >Don&#8217;t overlook Microsoft Ads\u00a0<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"What_advantages_does_Microsoft_search_offer_over_Google_for_PPC_experts_right_now\"><\/span>What advantages does Microsoft search offer over Google for PPC experts right now?<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>There are a couple of major advantages Microsoft (and its search engine, Microsoft Bing) offers over Google as I\u2019m writing this.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The first is an EQ advantage: I\u2019ve found their reps to be reliable, helpful, and far less likely to push an agenda than Google\u2019s reps.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This might be expected of a challenger brand that needs to work extra hard for market share, but it\u2019s still a plus to work with folks who look for ways to achieve your goals and do what\u2019s right for your clients.<\/p>\n<p>Strictly from a growth marketing perspective, Microsoft has the unique ability to pull in LinkedIn targeting, which could enable an account-based marketing (ABM) strategy for marketers looking for ways to leverage tighter budgets.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Microsoft offers targeting by job function, industry, and specific companies. They don\u2019t have full LinkedIn targeting capability yet (more on that in a bit), but you can leverage job-function exclusions and company targeting to construct ABM targeting for brands in your ICP.<\/p>\n<p>Microsoft\u2019s Search Partners network also includes <a href=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/duckduckgo-drops-below-100-million-searches-per-day-385835\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">DuckDuckGo<\/a>, which gets some buzz even though \u2013 or maybe because \u2013 it\u2019s a privacy-first platform and not an ad network.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re interested in testing DuckDuckGo, you can exclude other placements in Search Partners to try and concentrate spend there, but you can\u2019t actually isolate it for a clean test.<\/p>\n<p>On the features front, Microsoft recently beat Google to the punch by rolling out video extensions, which complement action extensions and review extensions as nicely built-out ad features.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- START INLINE FORM --><\/p>\n<div class=\"nl-inline-form border py-2 px-1 my-2\">\n<div class=\"row align-items-center\">\n<div class=\"col-12 col-lg-3 col-xl-4 pe-md-0 pb-2 pb-lg-0\">\n<p class=\"inline-form-text text-center mb-0\">Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-12 col-lg-7 col-xl-6  pe-lg-0\">\n<div class=\"form-nl-inline\">\n<div class=\"row g-0\">\n<div class=\"form-group col-12 col-lg-8 mb-0\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"col-12 col-lg-4 col-xl-4 mb-0\">\n<div class=\"d-none\">\n<p>Processing\u2026Please wait.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<button class=\"btn btn-dark inlineButton w-100 rounded-0 font-weight-bold\">SUBSCRIBE<\/button>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-12 col-lg-2 col-xl-2 ps-1\">\n<p class=\"text-center mb-0\"><a class=\"nl-terms\" href=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/termsofuse\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">See terms.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- END INLINE FORM --><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"What_disadvantages_persist_for_Microsoft_Advertising\"><\/span>What disadvantages persist for Microsoft Advertising?<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>The first and most obvious is scale. Although <a href=\"https:\/\/www.impression.co.uk\/blog\/bing-differ-google\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bing has closed the gap<\/a> with Google in search engine volume over the past three years, Google&#8217;s volume is nearly 10x that of Bing&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>And Bing is a little sibling in other ways. It tends to mimic Google with a few months of lead time. (For instance, the deadline for switching to Bing RSAs is approaching, and they&#8217;re pushing Performance Max-like functions for ecommerce brands).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In other words, most functionality released by Google eventually comes out on Bing whether advertisers like it or not.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On the quality front, Bing has traditionally struggled to match the consistency of Google&#8217;s algorithm, which has been an issue for advertisers fighting to maintain control of their top keywords.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Recently, their exact match query results look nearly as good as Google&#8217;s and they share almost all search term data on all keyword types (~99%, compared to Google&#8217;s &lt;80%).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>If this is still a disadvantage, it&#8217;s minimal \u2013 and could actually become an advantage if Bing continues to focus on consistency.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"When_and_why_should_advertisers_consider_investing_and_testing_more_on_Microsoft_Advertising\"><\/span>When (and why) should advertisers consider investing and testing more on Microsoft Advertising?<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>In my clients&#8217; accounts, lower levels of competition for keywords on Bing generally result in lower CPCs than Google&#8217;s.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>While this doesn&#8217;t always result in higher conversion rates (in fact, those tend to be higher on Google), it can result in more efficient CPLs.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>That said, the scale is much lower that the competitive CPLs alone don&#8217;t justify big resource shifts.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But Bing is a smart play in a couple of scenarios.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>We always recommend keeping an eye on your brand terms to protect your turf. This might seem obvious, but there are lots of brands that forget that step.<\/p>\n<p>Lower CPCs can help you get enough volume to understand what your spend is delivering.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I still recommend fully funding Google, but if you&#8217;re seeing a relatively soft month or opportunities to save budget from scrubbing lower-performing keywords on Google, it might be worth testing Bing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Overall, if you&#8217;re putting in a consistent investment into Google and struggling to improve or maintain returns, look at where return has dropped and consider scaling that back and re-investing into Bing tests.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Where_should_Microsoft_focus_on_improving_to_compete_with_Google\"><\/span>Where should Microsoft focus on improving to compete with Google?<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Microsoft appears to be going all in on AI, given its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/recode\/2023\/1\/26\/23571710\/microsoft-open-ai-chatgpt-google\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">recent $10B investment in OpenAI<\/a> and its red-hot ChatGPT functionality.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>If it incorporates ChatGPT into Bing search, <a href=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/microsoft-bings-chatgpt-interface-spotted-in-the-wild-392646\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">as is rumored<\/a>, it could instantly make waves for Bing as a trendy, user-friendly alternative to Google, helping it wrest away some market share.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On the advertising budget front, one thing I&#8217;d strongly recommend Microsoft work on providing advertisers is the ability to create audiences from LinkedIn targeting.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In-market audiences for B2B represent a major soft spot for Google that Microsoft should exploit as soon as possible. This could be a great grassroots ABM option for companies that can&#8217;t pay for expensive ABM tools.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s also room to add plenty of nuance to the existing LinkedIn-like targeting. The ability to target by job title and, more importantly, the ability to drill down by using the &#8220;and&#8221; piece of and\/or targeting, would give B2B advertisers a nice level of precision that Google doesn&#8217;t have.<\/p>\n<p>Along with targeting and chatbot innovation, I&#8217;d recommend Bing focus on buttoning up its offline conversion tracking.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s come a long way with the combination of the Microsoft click ID and the auto-tag for use with CRMs, but it&#8217;s not as robust as Google&#8217;s offline tracking, which is a big deal for B2B optimization.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Dont_overlook_Microsoft_Ads\"><\/span>Don&#8217;t overlook Microsoft Ads\u00a0<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>At this point, other than in a few specific use cases, I don&#8217;t have a compelling argument for shuttling resources away from Google and over to Bing. That said, Microsoft is steadily building momentum with room to create more.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>If Google&#8217;s engagement costs continue to climb, and Microsoft focuses on releases that allow advertisers to reach the right people more efficiently, the picture could change.<\/p>\n<p>For now, keep an eye on product releases and announcements. Stay ahead of the curve on adoptions from a platform determined to become more relevant in the coming months.<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/microsoft-ads-in-2023-key-areas-to-leverage-test-and-optimize-392650\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Microsoft Ads in 2023: Key areas to leverage, test and optimize<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Search Engine Land<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google\u2019s hard push into machine learning and automated bidding \u2013 and away from more manually controllable optimizations \u2013 builds a sense of exasperation for experienced PPC marketers. The January revision to the \u201cremove redundant keywords\u201d recommendations, where they announced the removal of redundant exact and phrase match keywords in favor of broad match, was an aggressive example of that trend.\u00a0 And it\u2019s made some of us wonder if it\u2019s time to reconsider a long-time little sibling of the paid search world, Microsoft Advertising. In late 2022, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"h5ap_radio_sources":[],"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-seo-blogs"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":false,"author_link":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/author\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8050\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}