Bing Intent Ads

Whenever you’re performing an online search, Bing is often overlooked next to its juggernaut rival, Google. We all know the latter is the world’s number one search engine, but Bing Ads with 918 million monthly searches, a market share of 25.1%, and ads appearing on Bing, Yahoo, and MSN can connect you with countless searchers not using Google. Therefore, keeping up to date in terms of features and updates within Bing Ads is still of great importance within the search engine marketing industry.

Starting on 26 October, depending on your campaign targeting settings, you will be automatically opted in to the beta of Bing Intent Ads and will see your ads appear on MSN and Microsoft Outlook. The initial click volume of this ad type is expected to be less than 1% of the total click volume on average.

For UK targeted Bing Intent Ads, the first 30 days of this beta will be free of charge while campaigns that target the U.S. will be charged. After the first 30-day period, all Bing Intent Ads campaigns will be charged on a cost-per-click basis.

What are Bing Intent Ads?

Bing Intent Ads combines a native ad placement with the intent signals from search. In other words, this ad type integrates search ads into page content, optimised based on the understanding Bing Ads has of user intent, which is based on search history, content signals and web activity, analysed and processed by artificial intelligence and machine learning. The respective ads will be delivered across Microsoft’s premium publishers.

What’s in it for you?

With Bing Intent Ads you can expand your reach, boosting volume and conversions, as you open up to additional users across MSN and Outlook, reaching potential customers beyond the search box. Also bear in mind that Intent Ads have a strong ad relevance matched to a consumer’s intent because they are based on a variety of signals, which have been mentioned above. Hereby you can choose and control your level of participation with bid modifiers you already use in Bing Ads.

Moreover, setting up Bing Intent Ads is fairly easy as the set-up and management tools are fully integrated with Bing Ads. The same goes for analytics and performance tracking, as data for Bing Intent Ads will show up on current reports.

How do you get started?

Getting started is effortless, as you will be automatically opted in to the beta on 26 October. Therefore, all of your search campaigns will be included automatically and you can access the feature and its benefits without investing any extra effort.

However, Bing recommends the use of Image Extensions to get the most out of Bing Intent Ads. Hence, relevant imagery should ideally be uploaded and associated with relevant campaigns and ad groups before the official Bing Intent Ads launch date towards the end of October. In case you are using Bing Ads API, you will have to update your code to manage Bing Intent Ads and download reporting. Performance data will automatically be added to your existing reports.