AdWords and Bing Ads have both become preferred paid search platform for advertisers. They give each other head-on competition when it comes to new features and updates. The changes introduced by AdWords are sooner seen been adopted by Bing Ads as well. But it would be wrong to say that Bing Ads is a follower, as there are certain features present with them that AdWords doesn’t have and vice-versa.
Lets have a look at what differentiates these two platforms from each other.
Market Share
As per Merkle’s Q1 Digital Marketing Report, desktop produced 72% of US Bing search ad click in Q1, 2018, while for Google it was 36%. Whereas Phone produced 54% clicks for Google and 18% for Bing.
Also, Google is still the search leader with about 65 %market share. Yahoo! and Bing have a combined 30 percent market share, which is a little more than 5 billion searches per month.
Product Ads
With shopping campaigns or product listing ads retailers can showcase their products and drive traffic to their online store or offline one.
While Google has spread this feature across the globe, Bing has made product ads available in the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, India and Australia for PC and on mobile & tablet in the U.S. & UK.
Ad Extensions
Both Bing Ads and AdWords offer a range of ad extensions to choose from, however the difference lies in the type of ad extensions available in one and not the other. So, AdWords does not have image extension and review extension (which Bing does), whereas Bing does not have affiliate location extension, promotion extension and message extension.
AdWords also offers the option of Automated Extensions, wherein AdWords predicts and automatically creates an ad extension and shows it along with your ad.
Also, if you wish to schedule your Ad Extensions in Bing Ads, then they have the option to set it as per the “time zone of the Location of person viewing your ad” along with the option to set it as per the time zone of the account. However, Google has the option to set it only as per your account’s time zone. This option is available while creating and editing an extension on both platforms.
Here is the ad extension schedule option as available in Bing Ads:
Here is the option as it appears in AdWords:
Ad Rotation
Ad rotation setting helps you decide how you wish to show multiple ads from your campaign. Both Bing Ads and AdWords have two options in Ad rotation:
- Optimize (for clicks/ conversions)
- Rotate Indefinitely (shows even the lower performing ads)
Where AdWords allows the Ad Rotation settings option at both Campaign and Ad Group level, Bing Ads only offers this option at the Ad Group level.
Ad Schedule
With ad schedule, advertisers can schedule to show their ads on more profitable time(s) of the day or day(s) of the week. In Bing Ads, by default ad schedule is based on the location of the person viewing your ads.
Whereas AdWords default setting is as per account’s time zone. So, if you are targeting a different time zone, you need to cross check that it matches their time and that you don’t end up setting it up at an odd time.
Language
Google AdWords has the option of 46 different language allowing advertisers to show ads to customers with that language setting or language of the website. The language can be set for each campaign and can be even edited later.
In comparison to AdWords, Bing Ads has 12 language options which is non-editable once selected. It is added at the ad group level and applies to all ads in it.
Negative Keywords
Bing Ads only offers the option of Phrase and Exact match type for negative keywords and not broad match type.
Whereas in AdWords you can assign all match types to the negative keywords (including broad match) except the Broad match modifier.
Note: Karooya’s Negative Keywords Tool for Google & Bing Ads is now Free for accounts with ad spend less than $10,000 per month. Save 10-20% of your search ad spend for free. Sign up and start saving your ad budget now.
Quality Score
As per Bing,
Quality Score in this form serves as guidance for advertisers on how to improve their ad to increase traffic and revenue. However, it is not the same metric used for ranking and pricing in the ad auction.
However in AdWords, Quality score is one of the key components in determining the ad rank along with other factors such as your bid amount, your competition and the context of the user’s search.
Network
Where in AdWords the ad network distribution (where you wish to show your ads) is set at campaign level, in Bing Ads it is set at ad group level:
On the other hand Google has the option to display ads on Search and Display network and lets you select either or both. Whereas Bing network is primarily search network (Microsoft, yahoo and AOL)
Here are the options available in AdWords network:
Another difference to note here is that in AdWords you can’t target the search partners individually, the search network gets targeted along with the search partners. However, Bing Ads offers the option to show your ads specifically on search partners.
So, these were some of the differences that are worth knowing. Though we can’t comment on which platform outweighs the other (as each has its own unique properties), yet AdWords seems to be a clear winner in innovating and bringing enhancements to its platform.
If you know of any other difference between these two platforms, we would love to hear about it from you in the comments below.
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Anirban Pathak
Surely Google ads is much better than Bing or other