Why Bing Why?

In the world of googling it, should brands use Bing for Advertising?

Why has Microsoft Advertising Bing replaced the Manual CPC Bid Strategy with Enhanced CPC Bid Strategy?

Is this the right time to take this major action?

• From the end of April, Bing has updated their Bid Strategy and all the account's (viz, Search, Shopping, and Dynamic Search Ads campaigns) manual bids turned into eCPC from the first week of May 2021.

Let's have a look at how Manual CPC is different from Enhanced CPC:

• Manual CPC is a Non-Automated Bidding Strategy whereas Enhanced CPC is kind of like a mix of manual and automated strategy.
• In one of the blog posts by Microsoft, they have mentioned that "Enhanced CPC will help your campaign get more conversions, lower your cost per acquisition, and improve your return on investment in Bing Ads".

"Imagine that your job is to stand outside a barber's shop and bring in new customers. If a businessman with shaggy hair comes walking by, then you give him a big wave and a hello. If a bald man walks by, then not so much. (Google AdWords Help, 2016)".

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Microsoft Bing states that using eCPC will

• Elevate the bidding practice: Bids get automatically optimized at the time of auction which maximizes the performance towards the business goals.
• Use flexibility to select tailored strategies: eCPC can work well towards any performance goals or you can choose from other specific strategies, such as Maximize Clicks, Maximize Conversions, Target CPA, or Target ROAS which increases the conversion by 5-10% more while lowering the cost per acquisition which also improves the conversion rate. They also state that eCPC will not only improve CPL, but it also improves cost per click (CPC) and will not exceed the maximum bid settings, it just like Microsoft wants to improve the efficiencies of the advertisers to move them more towards automatic.

However,

• They are correct with the views of automating smart bidding, but I believe that in the world of google where companies are investing hugely in google ads, Bing doesn't get as much care a lot of times, there isn't much traffic that comes from Bing. Maybe because of that they are losing their validity to keep up with other competitors in the ads market and Microsoft isn't making much money from their ads, but this doesn't mean that we shouldn't support it.

So how changing from manual to enhanced bid is Win-Win for Microsoft?

• We know that eCPC can adjust keyword bids with no caps in place, there is a chance that CPC could be much higher than what we expected and profitable for the account.
• Like if you are not getting many search terms with your manual bids, the eCPC will boost up your bids a little bit so that you do have a high enough bid to get a good amount of search terms and when we say in other terms more bids mean more spending and more spending means Win-Win for Bing!
• Somewhere these changes are a sign of losing control over our campaigns and giving full control to these ad platforms to automate our functions.
• This action of Bing may have backfired them and maybe small businesses who generally prefer manual optimization and who deals with fewer volumes start shifting more towards google ads.
• But as I said Microsoft intentions of replacing the bid strategies are not only just win-win but to make the advertisers work easier and allow them to focus their time more towards search terms, account structuring, ad copies, and some other interesting kinds of stuff and optimization instead of focusing only on bids adjustments.

Now, what are the solutions and alternatives we should use for Bing to adapt to this change?

• Set up experiment campaigns to validate performance: It means creating a duplicate of search campaigns which helps you to compare and apply the changes accordingly. These campaigns are like A/B testing which helps you to see what would work best for you.

or

• Try it on competitor's campaigns: Competitors' campaigns are always spending higher than Brand and Generic campaigns, so why not start trying eCPC for 30 days in these campaigns and check the efficiencies?

The figure is provided by Microsoft Bing, states that if your goal is to get leads/conversions then you can choose Cost per Acquisition, Maximizes Conversions and Target Return on Ad Spend and Enhanced CPC Biddings or if your goal is brand awareness then you can go for maximize clicks, enhanced CPC and target impression share bidding strategies.

So, let me leave you with some questions

• Are these changes worth it?
• Will Google Ads also come with these changes?
• Is this strategy will help Bing to capture Google Ads in the future?

I would love to hear your point of view.

Thank You.

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Sources: Search Engine Land, Microsoft Advertisement Blog, Word Stream, PPC Hubbub