What does first come to your mind once you hear “PPC”? If you thought of “Google Ads”, then you’re not alone! For most marketers, PPC is equitable to Google ads.
Why?
Well, it’s been reported that 1.17 billion people within the world use Google. Many businesses are just running behind ads by Google because everyone is doing that. This is a huge mistake especially for little and medium businesses that are ignoring Bing ads completely.
Both platforms are designed to help your online business reach their target audience, drive traffic and increase revenue. But each has its unique benefits and features that make them advantageous over the other. Google undoubtedly has the bulk of the search market, but Bing advertising certainly shouldn’t be forgotten. Rather than Google Ads vs. Bing Ads, marketers should be thinking about Google Ads plus Bing Ads.
Google Ads:
Google is the world’s most used search engine with an answer to almost anything. This powerful platform enjoys 88% of the US market share. Google Ads is a powerful platform that is comprised of two popular advertising networks- search networks and display networks.
Google ads vs Adwords, what’s the difference? You may already know the term AdWords, which is just the previous name for Google ads. The sign up for Google ads is free, and you can set your daily budget. Bid on the most relevant keywords for your campaign and create a negative keyword list to avoid unintentional clicks. Stay on top of your performance with Google Analytics, and adjust this list as required.
Bing Ads:
Bing’s market share is hard to ignore. Bing Ads altered its name to Microsoft Advertising in 2019. Remember that if you ignore Bing and you ignore 60 million searchers that cannot be reached on Google. Bing is particularly important if you target an international market. Bing allows you to line different time zones for various campaigns.
Bing delivers you deeper analytics and clarity in data. To create an ad on Bing, simply sign up for free and don’t pay anything until someone clicks on your advertisement. You will bid on specific keywords to ensure you reach your target audience and create a negative keyword list to avoid irrelevant searches. After this, you can sit back and watch your business grow.
Difference Between Bing Ads and Google Ads:
Whilst the search side of things is very similar, there are many more differences when it comes to the advertising side of each platform. The main difference, and probably the most important to an advertiser, is the difference in CPC across the two platforms. Due to the difference in demand, CPC differs greatly between Google ad services and Microsoft Advertising.
Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising make it easier to succeed in an audience faster. Pay Per Click (PPC) puts advertising in front of the right audience almost instantly. By choosing specific keywords, only users typing those keywords in targeted locations will see the ad. It can be a profitable return on investment when a user clicks on the ad and is taken to the website.
- Keyword Research Tools
Both platforms offer keyword research tools, broad match and negative keyword targeting. The largest difference you will find between the two is that the search volume for Bing keywords is much lower than Google. The main cause of this is that Bing’s reach is much lower than Google’s, but we will cover that in-depth later on.
- Ease of Use
None of the software solutions listed here will receive an award for their ease of use, and that’s okay because people have complex requirements on a PPC platform. It’s perfectly normal for such a system to have many different tools, windows, calculations, analysis and dashboards.
Google is somewhere in between: neither good nor bad, but at least it has good support that helps you get started. Bing Ads is quite confusing and the support is not so good either.
- Price
It’s incredibly difficult to form general statements about pricing within the field of PPC marketing. The competition also plays a very important role. This means that you can determine competitive markets based on the average cost per click, or CPC.
More people promote on Bing Ads, while in other areas, you would possibly find more people promoting on Google Ads. The Bing Ads keyword planner does not hold any estimates. On the other hand, Google does hold estimates with upper and lower bid limits. It suggests a bid to you, and that’s it.
- Reach
It’s well-known that Google has dominated the program market, and thus features a larger search volume and more reach. The Bing network is growing quickly, too. Bing now has 34% of the desktop program market share worldwide.
The reach of Bing Ads is around 63 million searchers which aren’t reached with Google AdWords. So if you aren’t using Bing advertising, that’s a considerable amount of missed opportunity. In addition to increased visibility, Bing allows advertisers to succeed in an older and more educated audience. The point here is that despite Ads reaching more people and having higher search volumes, Bing allows you to reach an even wider audience.
- Ad Restrictions
There have been a lot of ad regulations over the years that affect what you can and cannot display. Google tends to be a slightly stricter policy including restrictions or bans on ads including alcohol, adult content, gambling, healthcare, political content and more.
Bing ads also have restrictions including advertisements about dating, hate speech, political and religious content, violence and more. We suggest that you explore the different restrictions on both platforms if your advertising market could fall into any of these categories.
- Conversion Rates
Bing PPC ads tend to have higher engagement with sites and post-click landing pages they are sent to, but Google still has slightly higher conversion rates. The average conversion rate across all industries for Google Ads is 3.75%, while Bing Ads is about 2.94%. For some industries this may differ so again, you must adjust your strategy to suit your business and target audience.
Conclusion: Which One is Right for Your Business?
Whilst Google is a clear leader for the search engine industry, Bing is continuously upping their game and becoming a more competitive force. Simply put, the best platform for your business is the one that brings you the best results. To know which one does that, you must put them both to the test.
Google and Bing only scratch the surface of search engines available for the general internet user, but by developing a working knowledge of the two, advertisers can reach the lion’s share of internet searches. Both platforms hold their value and any advertiser would be mistaken for only focusing on one.
