Jun 6, 2013 at 1:50pm ET by Danny Sullivan

I got a surprise recently on my trip through Orange County's John Wayne Airport. When I tapped into the free wifi there, I was offered a "premium connection speed upgrade" if I took Bing's Bing It On challenge. It turns out Bing has been doing this in several airports since March. Bing told me: Bing began rolling this out in late March and it’s currently being offered in 13 airports. As you experienced, as an exchange for people taking a few minutes to take the challenge, they receive free, upgraded premium Wi-Fi access while at the airport. The airports you'll currently find i [...]

Across From Google I/O, Microsoft Runs The “Bing It On” Challenge

May 16, 2013 at 6:49am ET by Danny Sullivan

Coming out of Google I/O at Moscone Center in San Francisco yesterday, I did a double-take. Was that Microsoft pitching its "Bing It On" challenge against Google directly across the street. Yep. "Put the science back in computer science: test your Google bias inside," read a big banner, over the entrance to the Metreon Mall, which is across from Moscone. Inside, there's a "Bing In On" kiosk: One side is just an invitation to take the challenge; you actually do the challenge on one of the other sides: The kiosk simply takes you to the Bing It On site, where you're invited to [...]

Google On Bing Attack Ads: “Others Should Focus On Building Good Products”

Mar 10, 2013 at 1:14pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Google has largely ignored Bing's Scroogled campaign, the one attacking it over the pay-for-play change to Google Shoppping & Gmail privacy. But today, Google search chief Amit Singhal pushed back a bit, saying Bing perhaps should focus on making better products rather than attacking Google. Speaking at the SXSW conference, when taking a question posed via Twitter about how Google views Bing's attacks, Singhal responded to say "We focus on our users." Then he continued: "Others should focus on building good products, too" to audience applause. You can read more of his talk here: Li [...]

Microsoft Says Goodbye To “Scroogled” Ad Campaign

Mar 4, 2013 at 9:36am ET by Greg Sterling

Microsoft's "Scroogled" ad campaign, which attacked Google over paid inclusion in shopping and Gmail over privacy, is coming to an end. KQED reports that Microsoft will stop TV, newspaper and social media ads promoting the Scroogled message: "That part is about finished," Stefan Weitz, Microsoft senior director of online services, said on Thursday. Microsoft launched the Scroogled campaign last November to attack Google's all-paid-inclusion shopping search results. Our stories below cover more about this: Bing Attacks Google Shopping With “Scroogled” Campaign, Forgets It’s Guilt [...]

This Year, NORAD Tracks Santa With Microsoft & Bing, Not Google

Dec 12, 2012 at 2:15pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Google has been helping the popular NORAD Tracks Santa site locate Santa Claus on Christmas Eve since 2007. But this year, Jolly St. Nick will be tracked on Bing Maps, not Google. NORAD is also pushing an official Windows 8 app. It part of Microsoft being the new lead partner for the site. NOTE: For the latest news on 2012 Santa tracking, see our post: Where’s Santa Claus? The 2012 Santa Tracker List, From NORAD To Google, From The Web To Apps Goodbye, Google NORAD Tracks Santa has a new "team" page listing corporate sponsors. Microsoft tops the list; Bing Maps is prominent and Google is [...]

Bing Is For Doing Things It Tells You Not To Do

Jun 12, 2012 at 3:04pm ET by Danny Sullivan

"Bing Is For Doing" is the catchphrase being used in new ads for Microsoft's Bing search engine. But in a bit of irony, one new ad literally suggests jumping off a cliff but then warns in small print, "Do not attempt." I first saw the ad on Sunday when watching the Mad Men finale and again while watching a show on Hulu yesterday. It starts with "Kevin Cook" using the new social features in Bing to ask friends for any recommendations to do in Hawaii: Along comes his friend Neil Black who suggests jumping off a cliff. OK, a big rock, though some of the videos he links to call it a cliff j [...]

Bing’s New Social Search Now Available To All In US

Jun 1, 2012 at 9:03am ET by Barry Schwartz

Bing announced that the new social search sidebar which was available for testing a few weeks ago, is now available as the default search service for all US based searchers. The next time you go to Bing.com, your search will be layered in social elements on the right hand side. For more on how that works, see our story Bing Relaunches, Features New Social Sidebar. As part of this US launch, Bing has kicked off a new marketing campaign named Bing Summer of Doing. Here is one of the first commercials from Microsoft for the "Bing Summer of Doing" campaign: [...]

Keeping Up With Google: Bing Launches New “Search Quality Insights” Series

Mar 5, 2012 at 1:55pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Want to understand better how Bing creates its search results? Bing has announced a new "Search Quality Insights" series to provide a more behind-the-scenes look at its search engine. You know, like "Search Quality Highlights" series that Google launched last December. What's going on with these? And how does Bing's latest post help Google on anti-trust grounds? Google Seeks Transparency In Google's case, I view the Search Quality Highlights series as Google trying to deal with accusations, especially by those on the anti-trust front but even from places like the New York Times, that Google [...]

Microsoft Advertising Begins Aggressively Courting Small Businesses For Search

Mar 2, 2012 at 12:12pm ET by Pamela Parker

Microsoft Advertising has begun reaching out to a handful of search engine marketing (SEM) experts and small business customers, hoping to pair them up in the first part of an initiative to educate SMBs about adCenter and learn about their needs and challenges. "It's an initiative to see how we can better support our small business customers," Tara Kriese, group product marketing manager for the search business group at Microsoft Advertising, told me. The program doesn't yet have a name, but its internal code name was Bing Express and it will eventually have a Bing-related brand. Kriese [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Microsoft: Marketing

Bing’s New Ad Campaign: Bing Is For #Doing

Jan 20, 2012 at 4:29pm ET by Matt McGee

Bing is set to launch a new ad campaign this weekend that includes a subtle change from its previous messaging. Rather than promoting the idea of making decisions, the new campaign is about people doing interesting things and uses the slogan, Bing is for #Doing. More specifically, the new TV campaign focuses on winter sports athletes and will include freeskier Bobby Brown along with snowboarders Kaitlyn Farrington, Gretchen Bleiler and Kevin Pearce. Pearce, who's now returning to action after a brain injury forced him to miss the 2010 Olympics, is the subject of the first TV commercial, [...]

2012 New Year’s Day Logos From The Search Industry

Jan 1, 2012 at 11:02am ET by Barry Schwartz

Welcome to 2012 and Happy New Years Day everyone! We wanted to share with you the logos and themes from the search engines for New Years! Google had two different logos, one for New Years Eve and the other for New Years Day. Bing had an outstanding video home page background: Yahoo had this nice Flash animated logo: Ask.com: Dogpile: Baidu: Sogou: Also, you do not want to miss the best Google logos for 2011. [...]

For The Holidays, Google Has NORAD Tracks Santa & Bing Has Magical Holiday Calendar

Dec 1, 2011 at 1:50pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Google's teaming up again with NORAD to product one of my favorite Christmas traditions, the NORAD Tracks Santa web site. But new for this year, Bing joins the holiday sweepstakes with a Advent calendar-like Bing Magical Holiday Calendar. NOTE: For the latest news on 2012 Santa tracking, see our post: Where’s Santa Claus? The 2012 Santa Tracker List, From NORAD To Google, From The Web To Apps Where's Santa? Google & NORAD Know Let's start with Santa. Since it's not Christmas Eve, the site has a countdown until it begins Santa tracking operations for 2011: The site also has holiday [...]

Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Search Engine? Bing’s New TV Ads Have A Ranking/Bass Stop-Motion Flavor

Nov 23, 2011 at 3:27pm ET by Pamela Parker

If you know that Hermey The Elf longs to be a dentist, that Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer's girlfriend is named Clarice, and if you can sing "Silver and Gold" as well as Yukon Cornelius, Bing's new holiday ad campaign will be right up your alley. The Microsoft search engine's newest video spots play off the classic Rankin/Bass Christmas TV specials, updating the plot and inserting Bing into the action. One spot shows the Abominable Snow Monster trying to roar ferociously but evoking laughter rather than fear from those who hear him. So, he returns to his cave and searches for "scar [...]

Google Leads In Search Engines’ Efforts To Woo TV Viewers

Nov 11, 2011 at 12:23pm ET by Pamela Parker

Google's "Dear Sophie" TV spot for Chrome, in which a father creates a Gmail account for his newborn daughter and sends her multi-media messages as she grows up, earned the top spot in Ace Metrix' rankings of websites' TV advertisements. Despite being a recent and reluctant entrant to TV advertising, Google dominated the rankings with five of its ads coming in among the top ten. Bing wasn't too far behind, however, with three ads making the list. The Dear Sophie creative was especially popular among women between 16 and 20, and 36 to 49, who rated it extremely highly for likeability, at [...]

Google’s Got Logos, But Bing’s Home Page Images Attract Too

Jul 19, 2011 at 1:35pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Fast Company has a fascinating article on Bing's background images and how they are used to market the Bing service. While Google updates their logos to be fun and creative on special birthdays or occasions, Bing revamps their background with an image that stands out and leaves users asking for more. If you haven't noticed, Bing updates their home page background graphic daily (sometimes more often), with images and photography that are real eye catchers. They even add interactivity behind the background graphic by adding hotspots to the image, which lead to useful search queries. [...]

Bing Rewards Now On Bing’s Header Bar

Apr 22, 2011 at 12:00pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Bing has added the Bing Rewards program directly to the top header bar of Bing's search results. Now when you search on Bing, you will see the "Rewards" link and icon on the right of the "sign in" link. Here is a picture: Bing said that integrating this Rewards link into the header will give Bing users "easy and quick access to earning credits and redeeming rewards." The feature should be visible for all US users using Internet Explorer 7 or later and the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari browsers. Here is a picture of the Rewards menu showing earned rewards: [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Microsoft: Marketing

First Angry Birds Product Integration To Tout Bing

Mar 7, 2011 at 8:22pm ET by Pamela Parker

Are digital porkers continually outwitting your Angry Birds? Try Bing for the answer to vanquishing the porcine menace. In a first for Rovio, the developers of the hit mobile app, the company has struck a deal whereby Microsoft's Bing search will be integrated into the Angry Birds game. Angry Birds, which boasts versions for the iPhone, iPad and Android OS devices, has a US audience of 25 million players currently. It's also coming to Xbox LIVE on Windows Phone 7 later this spring, in another partnership between Rovio and Microsoft. "Angry Birds is a phenomenon that is growing rapidly an [...]

Bing Hopes For Touchdown With New ESPN Partnership

Jan 24, 2011 at 12:01am ET by Matt McGee

Football fans have probably already seen plenty of Bing advertising across various sports. And as the Super Bowl approaches, you're going to see more: Bing and ESPN have just announced a new partnership that involves two pre-Super Bowl promotions: A new feature called "I Am A Champion" that begins airing this week on SportsCenter and NFL Live. It profiles various Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks and the "key life and career decisions" they've made. Sponsorship of ESPN The Magazine's 2011 "NEXT" event during Super Bowl weekend. Bing has been aggressively advertising to football fans d [...]

Search & The 2011 Sundance Film Festival

Jan 19, 2011 at 2:37pm ET by Elisabeth Osmeloski

The annual Sundance Film Festival is about to converge here in Utah January 20-30, 2011, with Bing.com and YouTube as Leadership Sponsors. Bing is the official search engine of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival website, and YouTube has two special channels for the event, the main Sundance Film Fest channel, and the YouTube Screening Room, featuring 12 short films from this year's festival, which will only be available on YouTube until February 3. Bing Continues To Cozy Up To Hollywood Earlier today, the Bing Entertainment team announced earlier a special new video site: BingSundance.com [...]

Bing Terminates Relationship With Publisher Doing Tricky Home Page Switch

Jan 18, 2011 at 1:07pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Is Facebook's third largest advertiser really a site that tries to trick people into switching to Bing? Apparently not. Still, Bing's not happy with the tactics and is ending its relationship with the publisher. The site, Make-My-Baby.com, now appears to have gone down. But earlier today, it was suggesting that people needed a plug-in to use it -- one that would install a toolbar and change their search provider and home page to Bing. The site had allowed people to create baby characters. Not Facebook's 3rd Biggest Advertiser An Ad Age article suggests that Make-My-Baby is Facebook's [...]

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