For dealing with PPC advertising, businesses tend to look at Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) versus Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords). These are the top two platforms used by most businesses online, helping them to better reach and target their desired audience.
There are a number of questions you will want to ask yourself before you make a final decision on which platform to choose, including:
- Which platform offers the most reach
- Which has the best targeting capabilities for your chosen audience?
- Which is the most cost efficient?
- Which will produce the best conversions and profit?
Whilst these questions will help you to find the best option for your needs, it is worth thinking about whether or not you could use them both, as each platform has different benefits that could work to boost your conversions and sales.
What Are The Differences Between Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising?
The basic idea behind both Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising is the same. Both are pay-per-click advertising platforms, which work with businesses to help them to reach their desired audience, drive traffic to their sites and increase profit.
Google Ads
Google Ads is made up of two separate networks:
- The Search Network: Wherein advertisers create text ads which will appear on the search engine results pages
- The Display Network: Businesses create display ads (graphic ads) which appear on other websites all over the web.
These networks work together to help businesses to place the types of ads they want both into the valuable front SERPs and partner sites all over the internet.
Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft Advertising powers three search engines – Bing, Yahoo and AOL. This means that when advertisers place content on one platform, their ad can be seen on all three for no extra cost. Although Google is the internet’s leading search engine, this could offer a benefit to businesses as ad campaigns through Microsoft Advertising can be seen through searches on these three search engines, as well as any Bing, AOL and Yahoo-owned sites and partner sites.
Cost-Per-Click (CPC) And Average Position
Whilst Google is without doubt the most popular search engine on the web, currently taking around 75% of the global Search Engine Market Share, this also means that ads placed on the platform are up against a lot more competition. For this reason, ads placed on Microsoft platforms actually show in much better positions on Bing and associated search engines. For smaller businesses looking to save money for a better result, this makes Microsoft Advertising the clear winner on this scale. CPC is also slightly lower for Microsoft Advertising than Google Ads, offering a more appealing package overall.
Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
According to Wordstream, click-through-rates on Microsoft Advertising are almost 50% higher than that of Google Ads, when counted as an average across all industries. Click-through-rates are critical for those paying for advertising on any platform, as this is a key factor in determining whether or not your ads are effective or not.
Once again, Microsoft Advertising boasts a better CTR than Google Ads, stealing the win in this comparison as well.
Keywords
There isn’t much of a difference in the two platforms when it comes to setting and placing keywords for searches. Both platforms offer a keyword research tool, broad match and negative keyword matching. In this case, though, Google Adscomes out on top with a much higher traffic volume for keywords on the platform.
Reach
As mentioned before, Google clearly dominates the search engine market by sheer volume of searches. However, bearing in mind just how much competition there is on the platform, Microsoft Advertising should not be discounted. The Bing network gets a fair amount of searches in its own right, and is growing exponentially.
According to statistics, Bing has 34% of the desktop search engine market share globally, with 5.4 billion monthly searches conducted on the Bing network. Bing is also able to reach people that aren’t reached with Google, those who use the platform exclusively. This audience is an almost untapped resource for some industries.
Search Partner Targeting
Google and Microsoft both have search partner networks, which are essentially sites which work in tandem with those search engines, allowing the reach of search network ads to expand far beyond these domains alone. Google has search partners set at the campaign level, whilst Microsoft Advertising allow for ad network distribution to be adjusted at the ad group level.
With Google, the search partner network includes hundreds of websites including ask.com and YouTube. When you set your campaign up in Google Adsyou will automatically be included on the search partners setting. If you don’t get the results you want using this setting, you can toggle it off to not be included on them. However, this is where this may not work well for some businesses, as there is no option to target specific partners, or only the search partners. You either choose ‘on’ or ‘off’.
Microsoft Advertising , on the other hand, have options separating partners by ‘syndicated search partners’ and ‘owned and operated’. This allows businesses to choose one of the partner options, both, or neither. Businesses are able to target more specifically, and optimise their campaigns to better suit their goals.
Demographics
Whether Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising works best for you with regards to demographics depends largely on the type of audience you are targeting. Statistically, almost 40% of Bing users are between 35-54 years old, have a higher than average income, and almost half are married. Google users tend to be younger and single.
Different industries and businesses may find that one option here better suits the audience they are trying to reach and in this case that will be the right option for them.
Conversion Rate And Cost-Per-Lead (CPL)
If you are paying for your ad campaign then you will definitely want it to bring in good results. One of the best ways to measure this is by how many leads you get from it. A lot of statistics here depend entirely on the business, industry and target audience, but research has shown that Microsoft Advertising has a 6% lower conversion rate. However, the average CPL on Microsoft Advertising is also 6% cheaper, evening this out.
For most businesses, the fact that Google has such a substantially higher search rate gives Google Adsthe edge on this one.
Which Platform To Choose?
When it comes to deciding which advertising platform is the one for you, it helps to know all of these facts and statistics, but it will still come down to which platform you feel the most comfortable with, and feel that you could work the best with. It is important that businesses also realise that there is no rule that they must choose one or the other, and using the two together could be the perfect solution for some companies.
If you need any further information, or would like to discuss how we can help you with your online marketing then you can contact Maxweb today on 0151 652 4777 or via email at info@maxwebsolutions.co.uk
Posted on Friday, March 27th, 2020 in Digital Marketing.
