Google’s competitor Bing now marks ads more clearly and provides more context for them. At the same time, more searchers who potentially see these ads should be attracted; To achieve this, Microsoft has launched a competition that promises over a million US dollars.
There was a time, shortly after the launch of ChatGPT, when Microsoft had high hopes of using Bing to limit Google’s search market share. After all, thanks to the collaboration with OpenAI, Bing Search was ahead of the competition for a while at the beginning of 2023, and many users were able to gain their first search experience in the context of generative AI. But to date, Bing has not been able to significantly reduce Google’s market power, although Bing remains by far number two in the search market. Statcounter Sea Bing’s global market share is 4.2 percent, compared to Google’s 89.3 percent – on the desktop alone, Bing has 11.7 percent compared to 79.9 percent.
Now Microsoft’s search engine would like to win over numerous users with a highly prized competition. Meanwhile, Bing adjusts the ad labels and provides more context for ads in searches – following the example of Google.
Bing highlights ads more clearly and responds to criticism
The search engine Bing has been widely criticized for not making display markers particularly clear in search. In a recent test, the Microsoft subsidiary placed the ad label directly after the domain name, so that it was barely visible at first glance. The SEO expert has this Frank Sandtmann discovered and shared via Mastodon.
Now, however, Bing is doing away with less visible ad markers. The label “Sponsored” or in German “Gesponsert” is introduced for the display of advertisements. We can already see it in the search. Like SEO expert Barry Schwartz reported on Search Engine Roundtablethey replace the wording “Ad” or “Display”. Google made exactly this change around two years ago.
Google changes advertising label:
“Ad” becomes “Sponsored”
However, Bing’s ad marking is sometimes still much harder to recognize than that on Google. In our example for the search query “macbook” we found some ads in which the label “Sponsored” under the title was placed in front of the snippet text in a small and difficult to read manner.
The first users can get more information about the advertisers using a light bulb icon that SEO expert Khusal Bherwani discovered in the search.
Bing now page insights bulb feature for ads. its new
we can see different labels in search and insight. pic.twitter.com/xAvFpIvcoL
— Khushal Bherwani (@b4k_khushal) November 5, 2024
Competition is designed to encourage search engagement on Bing
Microsoft wants more and more people to see the ads on Bing and is therefore keen to continually attract new Bing users. For example, the search engine delivers results for other search contexts, such as Meta AI and Ecosia. In order to compete with Google, but also other search alternatives such as TikTok, ChatGPT – and the new ChatGPT Search -, Perplexity and Co., Bing has launched a competition that awards one million US dollars to one person and another ten winners :inside can bring in $10,000 each.
About the action Kevin Schmitz also reports on t3n. Microsoft explainedthat participation is possible by registering with a Microsoft account – even in Germany. Anyone who registers and collects so-called entries through interactions via Bing increases their chances of winning. Sharing the link to the competition can also bring in entries. In addition, Microsoft promotes the Rewards program, with which users can collect points and receive rewards via Bing. And Microsoft promises donations to the WWF and UNICEF that are related to participation in the competition.
More searchers as a target, more advertising sales as a result?
It is questionable whether this competition alone will attract many new users to Bing. For some users, however, it may be a welcome addition. However, the AI search options in particular are likely to be the focus of searchers; In this context, Bing provides a helpful search option with the Copilot integration.
Microsoft hopes that more users will ultimately generate more sales in the search ad business. This is already more competitive than ever. TikTok is competing with search engines with search ads, and AI search areas like Perplexity, which also want to rely on ads, will further diversify the field. In the latest quarterly report Microsoft was able to record 18 percent growth in the Search and Ads area. Overall, the group earned $13.2 billion in the quarter in More Personal Computing, but this also includes other divisions such as gaming and hardware. Bing has to prepare for strong competition, especially in the area of new AI search solutions. But although the search engine is still well behind Google, it is still well ahead of other search engines worldwide and in Germany, such as Yandex, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia and Co. However, it is not necessarily the classic search engines that will represent the greatest competition for an area like Bing rather ChatGPT Search, Perplexity and possibly also TikTok.
Google’s search ad power is crumbling:
Soon less than 50 percent market share
Source: onlinemarketing.de
