Bing bought a pretty funny product placement on the Colbert Report this week. Comedian Stephen Colbert was promised $2,500 for each mention he did of Microsoft’s Bing search engine, with the money to go to his Gulf oil spill relief charity fund. Colbert did 40 within 2 minutes in various ways, racking up $100,000 in all.

The Huffington Post highlighted the clip, which you can watch below:

I asked Yusuf Mehdi, Senior Vice President, Online Audience Business at Microsoft, about the clip during my keynote talk with him today at SMX Advanced, when we were discussing Bing product placements and other marketing in general.

Mehdi said they gave Colbert full creative license on how he wanted to do it. I’ll say. Perhaps the funniest part was when Colbert said:

Bing is a great web site for doing internet searches. I know that, because I Googled it

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Marketing

About The Author: Danny Sullivan is a Founding Editor of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also serves as Chief Content Officer for Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series. He has a personal blog called Daggle (and keeps his disclosures page there). He can be found on Facebook, Google + and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan. See more articles by Danny Sullivan

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