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Bing Products Ads – Disappointing

Disappointed by Bing Product Ads

Bing Gets It Wrong…

After some great success with Google Shopping Ads (formerly Product Listing Ads – PLAs) I thought I’d try out Bing Product ads which are currently in Beta.
Now normally, I’ve only got good things to say about Bing. Their ad cost is a fraction of Google & CTRs and CPAs are often far superior. But I’ve been left disappointed with their Product Ad offering.

Firstly, it’s incredibly laborious to set up – you can’t just import your Google Shopping campaign as you can with their Search ads. There were also some anomalies in accessing the merchant centre which meant I had to spend some time on the phone to support to work out how to access it all.

Anyway, after the 5 days it took to verify the merchant account and the 5 days to review the product feed I was eagerly anticipating some great results.

I let the ads run for a day – nothing!

I checked the ads and they were not being triggered. I wondered why not and performed a search.

I’m advertising a product called Blanket Answer – it removes blanket weed in ponds. The results can be seen in the screen grab below.

Enough said – time to get on the phone to Bing Ads support!

Google AdWords Side Ads Disappeared

Anyone else noticed that the ads on the side of the AdWords search results page has disappeared?

You are probably unlikely to have noticed, as people don’t really pay that much attention to Google AdWord ads. In fact, 31% of Google users in a survey, claimed never to have seen an ad… ever!

For the online marketer & advertiser though, this is concerning, not just that people don’t view ads, but more importantly, that the opportunity to advertise on Google has just been reduced significantly.

Take a look at this search I made for “pay per click companies essex”

See how the ad slots on the side have disappeared? Well there were 6 more slots there – now the opportunity to advertise in them has gone.

Loss of Advertising “real estate”?

Many may complain that there’s been a loss of search engine results page “real estate”, and that’s bad right? But it’s not all doom and gloom. In fact, if you look at the search result for pay per click company essex above, you will see that a fourth slot has been added at the top of the page.

This is great news! 78% of all adwords clicks originate from the “top of page” position. Hardly any clicks come from the side bar, so maybe this is a blessing in disguise.

And you can be sure that Google wouldn’t make this change if they thought they would lose clicks – as clicks mean revenue as surely as points mean… well you know the rest.

Also, if we scroll further down the search results page, we see there are now 3 ad slots at the bottom of the page. This new layout now resembles the Mobile search results page. So in fact the opportunity to show your ad on Google has only decreased by 2 slots, and those were hardly ever clicked on anyway.

I think this is a positive step from Google to re-energise PPC results, which we must not forget, is the core of their business. I wonder how Bing will respond…

Re-engage users with remarketing

Remarketing is an excellent way to re-engage users who have visited your website.

How Remarketing Works.

Remarketing is a simple(ish) concept that allows you to readvertise to people who have alread interacted with your website. A cookie is put down on the visitors computer – the visitor is then shown your advert the next time they make a relevant search or visit a website that can show Google display adverts.
NB: Remarketing can also be applied to search and email lists also.

The true power of remarketing allows you to remind visitors of your product / service as they browse the net or search for a related product. This multi-touch process has been demonstrated to be more effective in increasing conversion rates than either search advertising or display, alone.

Remarketing: An example

Imagine you sell shoes. A visitor comes to your online shop an views a pair of size 9 Nike trainers. The visitor leaves without purchasing – perhaps to checkout some alternatives. As they then browse the web they are shown your advert, specifically the one for size 9 Nikes. The visitor becomes familiar with your shop, is reminded about the product they viewed and returns to complete the purchase.

Now they have completed a purchase, you can remarket to them in other ways. You can show them related product ads, scotchguard, for example or gym kit they may be interested in. This is extremely useful, as having completed one purchase, they are much more likely to complete another.

How To Set Up Remarketing

Setting up remarketing is not particulary difficult – but understanding how best to use it can be.

To set up, you just need to add the Google Adwords Remarketing Tag to your website – if you are using the Univeral Analytics tag already, then you can skip this step.

Next you create an audience – say, people who visited but did not purchase.

Then, create your ad to show to this audience. And that’s it!

Ok, it’s probably not that simple, so our advice is to let a professional do it. If you are interested in running a remarketing campaign, why not talk to us?