Are Bing ads Better Than Google Ads?

By Max Sinclair

Bing Ads vs Google Ads; which is better? It’s the (PPC) age-old question with a complex answer. On the one hand, Google has the lion’s share of the search engine market. Since its launch in 1998, it has continued to invest in innovative design, algorithms, and services that have contributed to it dominating the internet scene.

On the other hand, not only does working with Microsoft’s Bing Ads mean less competition, it also has a very specific demographic. Another bonus is generally, the Cost Per Click tends to be cheaper with Bing Ads over Google Ads too!

Today, I’m going to talk you through the pros and cons of Bing Ads, my goal is to hone in on both services to establish which one is better for your business.

Learn more about Bing vs Google ads and which I prefer in this YouTube video. Don’t forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel for more marketing and ads tips!

The Similarities Between Google Ads and Bing Ads

Google Ads and Bing Ads work in much the same way, both are PPC platforms whereby businesses can advertise their products or services to a target audience. These can be text ads, shopping ads, or display ads, they appear in search engine results pages, as well as search network and display networks. Ads are displayed based on a user’s search terms and the demographics they fall into.

Bing Ads and Google Ads are also visually similar on a search results page, Bing users will find that their ads are so visually similar to the untrained eye indistinguishable.

Beyond that, both Google Ads and Bing Ads use similar keyword targeting and have tools to match. Both offer negative keyword targeting, as well as broad match, phrase match and exact match keyword targeting.

So at a glance, it all looks and feels very similar.

Google Ads VS Bing Ads – What Are The Stats?

The main issue with Bing Ads is that there are fewer Bing users than Google users out there. In fact, considerably less, Google at a whopping 92.2% share with bind down at 3.42%

Most of us know that Google is the most used search engine in the world, over the years, it has successfully beaten out competitors like Yahoo and Ask Jeeves. And, when Microsoft launched Bing in 2009, Bing was not able to stand toe to toe with an already well-established Google.

When you get down to it, it’s all in the numbers. Depending on the industry, Google owns roughly 80-90% of the market. It processes a massive 85 billion searches every day. Whereas Bing, in second place and with far fewer users, owns just 2.5-8% of the market. Around 800 – 900 million searches go through Bing per day.

When you consider searching online, most people think of Google. Google has developed a reputation for being the go-to place to find new information. If we want to know something, we “Google it”, we don’t “Bing it”. Google’s association with learning has proven to be a very powerful persona.

It’s All in the Algorithms and Data

An accurate search relies almost entirely on data. Naturally, a search engine that processes more searches will have more data to analyse and interpret. When a bot crawls a webpage, it analyses aspects such as keywords, links, images, and the overall quality of its content. A search engine’s algorithm then determines the website’s place in searches based on the data it collects.

One thing to note though is that Bing’s and Google’s algorithms are different. They place importance on different things. Google, for example, maintains the importance of optimising a website for mobile devices. This is known as mobile-first indexing. Whereas Bing’s single index is optimised for both mobile websites and desktop websites alike.

Google and Bing use the data they collect to select which ads to show to each user. This data comes from user activity and demographics, as well as the specifications you include in your Bing or Google Ad campaigns. The data helps to ensure that ads are targeted. In other words, the ads are being placed in front of people who are more likely to be interested in what they are advertising.

Audience Reach

When it comes to paid advertising, you aim to find the most niche audience you can. If, for example, your business sells pet supplies, you have to find pet owners, or, if your company sells swimming goggles, you have to find swimmers. That’s the bottom line.

When you have a larger pool of people, you are more likely to find a specific niche within that pool. More still, there are likely to be more people in that niche than if you found your niche amongst a smaller audience. Therefore, Google appears to be a clear winner in this respect due to its larger search volume.

How Ad campaigns Work

Part of our job at Snowball Creations is collecting data from the ad campaigns we create and run. This includes basic demographics of people that are more likely to click on our ads like age, location, gender, etc.

The more data points we access, the more we – and Google – can hone in on our target audience. Google will search through its billions of users to reach an audience that perfectly matches our client’s buyer persona.

Google also, with enough conversions, essentially learn what that customer looks like and finds more people that look exactly like the person, or people, that converted. As we’ve already established, Google has a far bigger playing field than Bing to find your target audience. Thus, you can target your PPC campaigns much more precisely.

This is the main reason why I prefer Google to Bing in most cases, We run both Bing and Google Ads, Google Ads is Snowball Creations’ go-to digital ads network but there is time and place for bing! You can learn more about our process here.

The Pros of Bing Ads

Although Google Ads is our number one choice, we do use Bing Ads too! Let’s get into some reasons why we would choose to use Bing PPC ads:

Targeting Older Demographics

Bing Ads can be more beneficial than Google Ads if you are targeting older demographics, this is because Windows- that’s anything that’s not Apple – comes preinstalled with the Microsoft Edge browser, with Bing by default.

A lot of the time, these people simply don’t think about switching search browsers and staying within the Microsoft ecosystem. If you want to do some shopping or browse Amazon, then to most people Firefox, Chrome and Bing all look the same!

Either way, older demographics very often just stick with the search engine that is placed in front of them. This can make Bing Ads the ideal choice for businesses targeting a more mature audience. This is actually one of the reasons Microsoft Bing Ads has remained relevant. It is how it has earned its way to second place in the digital marketing game. Bing Ads is even growing year on year since its release, proving its value within the digital marketing space.

The Cons of Bing Ads

I don’t think I need to say anything further about the size of Google’s market share compared to Bing’s. That is evident by now. However, there are more factors that contribute to Bing ranking second in the Google vs Bing Ads debate.

Let’s take a look:

Bing is “Less Intelligent” Than Google

When it comes to search engine marketing and PPC, the technology behind it matters…

a lot.

Search engines use all data collected, AI and machine learning to provide accurate search results. Being the innovative tech giant that it is, Google’s AI technology has proved to be the more intelligent choice. It surpasses not only Microsoft’s Bing but also Facebook’s ad platform AI in processing data and applying that data to tangible results.

AI from a number of different companies undertook an IQ test. Google’s came out as the winner with an IQ of 47.28 in 2016. Bing, on the other hand, scored 31.98.

It’s worth noting that in 2014, Google scored 26.5 on an IQ test, which just shows the massive technological advances Google has made in just two years!

Seven years on and Google continues to invest in its AI and machining learning, It will no doubt see more and more growth as we delve even further into the technological age.

Lower Click Through Rate and Conversion Rate

Bing is sometimes praised for being the cheaper option out of the two ad platforms, While this can be true, Google has more users, and can fight back by affording users higher CTRs and conversion rates!

The sheer amount of Google’s search traffic and userbase compared with Bing’s gives Google another advantage, endlessly more customers to target!

Should you use Google Ads or Bing Ads? The Verdict

Google Ads remains our top choice for the majority of businesses. Its large number of users and powerful data-driven AI gives us access to so much more data to process and use to find your perfect customer!

Bing Ads has digital advertising advantages too, It is great for reaching new audiences and expanding your business further than just Google alone and, if you want to get in front of an older demographic, Bing Ads is definitely one to consider.

All in all though, in the Bing Ads vs Google ads debate, Google wins!

If you’re looking to expand your online presence through digital marketing and PPC ads, we can help you achieve this and more. At Snowball Creations, we live and breathe paid advertising.

Get in touch and I’ll be happy to talk through your options with you.