Online marketing firm the Search Agency says that based on analysis of its own accounts, Microsoft search ads appear to be performing better since Bing launched. The firm looked at the final three weeks of Live Search’s existence, and the first three of Bing’s.
Click through rates, conversions, and conversion rates all increased. One would be tempted to chalk this up to the initial burst of Bing enthusiasm that came along with its launch. In other words, just because Bing is seeing a lot of action now, doesn’t mean it will be a year from now. The Search Agency is quick to point out however, that impressions have actually been fewer.
“Although Bing’s search volume has increased on the heels of their aggressive advertising campaign, Microsoft has been more selective on which ads they serve on each search results page, often times electing not to serve any ads at all,” says Frank Lee on the firm’s blog. “As a result, we saw a 22% drop in total impressions. But Bing has significantly increased the relevancy of those impressions, yielding double digit growth in CTR and conversion rate.”
The rates found from the Search Agency’s analysis:
– Click Through Rate (CTR) up 15%
– Conversions up 6%
– Conversion rate up 18%
– Cost per Acquisition (CPA) down 3%
Lee does acknowledge that the “curiosity factor” could have played a big role in in the numbers above – “explorers clicking on all sorts of listings to see how the new engine performs.”
Still, conversions are conversions. Thinking back to my first experiments with using the Bing search engine, I did not find myself clicking through on ads, and if I had, I likely wouldn’t have made any purchases. If people were just messing around to see how Bing works, I have to wonder how many conversions this would have inspired. Perhaps there really is something significant in these numbers.
