Bing & Yahoo are on the rise in Paid Search

You hear their name all the time. “Google, Google, GOOGLE!” There is no doubt the company has done an amazing job positioning itself at number one in the world of search engines. People no longer say (if they ever did), “I’m going to search for something online.” They now say “I’m going to Google it.” Yes, Google is a verb as well as a Fortune 500 noun.

In April, Google searches accounted for 64% of all U.S. searches. Although that number may seem high, they have been steadily losing ground to Bing powered search (bing.com & search.yahoo.com). Bing and Yahoo! now add up to 30% of all online searches (up 5% since April and 11% since last year). So there is no doubt that they have made tremendous strides against the mighty search giant that is Google. But what is the last piece of the puzzle? Advertising.

Currently, Google makes up about 78% of all U.S. search revenue while Bing and Yahoo! account for around 16.5%. That is a HUGE jump compared to total online searches. It may seem like AdCenter has a lot of catching up to do, but this “catching up” can also be looked at as potential. But why is this happening? Bing powered search has 158 million unique searchers each month. That number is nothing to shake a stick at, yet advertisers insist on staying away from the platform. As you can see in the picture below (right), Microsoft has had a steadily increasing growth in revenue since 2009. Google’s growth rate pales in comparison to that of Microsoft. This displays the tremendous potential of Microsoft.

Why should advertisers start using AdCenter?

There are actually quite a few reasons:

• There is much less competition between advertisers on Bing/Yahoo compared to Google
• Generally speaking, less competition = lower priced clicks
• Less competition means less ads to compete with for the “prime real estate”

When people have fewer ads to choose from, the advertisers in those spaces will have a better chance at success. Another benefit we have seen with Bing/Yahoo is better conversion rates. Simply put, AdCenter is better at creating leads and/or purchases. The combination of those two benefits, along with lower priced clicks and better conversion rate, leads to a cheaper Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA). CPA is one of the most important stats to keep track of because it is essentially your cost per purchase/lead. If you have a low CPA, then your marketing will pay for itself with the purchases/leads it generates…And that should be the goal for most PPC campaigns.