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, which will air during the NFC Championship footbal game on Sunday and during the upcoming X Games.

The athletes’ stories will air on TV, and will also be promoted online via social media campaigns.

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.

NOTE: For the latest news on the 2011 Santa Tracker, see our post: Where’s Santa Claus? The 2011 Santa Tracker List, From NORAD To Your Phone!

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 video messages and “Countdown Village,” where kids try to discover which part of the village is busiest:

On Christmas Eve, the real action begins. You’ll be able to track Santa Claus on a map, through your phone and watch videos. Google’s blog post explains more, as does our story from last year. Here’s also highlight from last year:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bing’s Calendar Of Surprises

Over at Bing, the Bing Magical Holiday Calendar is brand new. Like an Advent calendar, you can “open” one of the many items each day for a suprise:

Currently, selecting the first day plays a video highlighting key events from the year:

The video often swoops back to put the subjects in the context of a search at Bing:

Bing doesn’t have the video up on either its own Bing Originals channel or its YouTube channel, but it’s pretty nice.

The Bing blog post about the calendar says that it’s also offering the chance to win prizes, but I saw nothing like that myself. Perhaps that will be part of future surprises under those numbers.

Bing also has some cute Christmas TV ads running. See our previous post about that:

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

As for the Google-NORAD Santa Tracker, be sure to return to that on Christmas Eve.  To really understand all you’ll be able to do, see our detailed review from last year:

• Where Is Santa Claus? The 2010 Santa Tracker List, From NORAD To Google Earth

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 “scary monster,” watching and listening to videos until he perfects his frightening roar technique:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another shows Abominable, prospector Yukon Cornelius and Hermey use Bing to find an island vacation destination. They end up at the Island of Misfit Toys:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another spot has Hermey searching for videos and finds one showing Santa and Mrs. Claus playing with bubble wrap:

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the last spot, Yukon Cornelius complains of back pain from pulling his sled, and Hermey uses his smartphone to find a remedy — hot yoga.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The videos were produced by Bent Image Labs, a Portland, Oregon, company specializing in stop motion animation that has previously done “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”-themed work for Saturday Night Live and Aflac.

The Bing spots are viewable online and will appear in holiday TV programming throughout the season, including specials like “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” “Frosty the Snowman,” and “South Park Christmas.” They will also be seen during previews in advance of upcoming feature films in theaters, including “Arthur Christmas,” “The Muppets,” and “Happy Feet Two.”

The Dear Sophie creative was especially popular among women between 16 and 20, and 36 to 49, who rated it extremely highly for likeability, attention, change and relevance. Other Google spots that made the top ten include The Johnny Cash Project, It Gets Better, Lady Gaga: Mother Monster and Mom & Pop: Daniel & Jennifer Northcutt.

Google’s success is especially notable given that the company had a long history of being wary of marketing spending. For quite a while, Google contended that its products spoke for themselves, and it relied on word-of-mouth to spread the word about new releases. In the last few years, however, the company has succumbed and begun marketing in earnest, even buying a Super Bowl ad.

Effective Bing ads include two featuring the Krochet Kids, a non-profit that trains women in Uganda to crochet, then selling the hats they make. The third highlights the Real Steel motion picture, showing how a person could find out about the movie, showtimes, and coordinate with friends using Bing’s features.

The element that unifies the effective ads is storytelling. Rather than simply explaining the product’s features, these ads tell stories in which the technology is the hero. In “Dear Sophie,” Gmail and the Chrome browser allow the new father to connect with his daughter. In “The Johnny Cash Project,” YouTube allows music video producers to share a crowdsourced video of Johnny Cash’s final recording. The Krochet Kids ad tells the story of the non-profit organization.

Additionally, Ace Metrix noted that Google’s success was also driven by extensive testing. Google releases videos on YouTube and can gauge reaction before committing to the big bucks for TV placement.

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.

Stephanie Horstmanshof, managing editor of Bing and the so-called “queen of the homepage” told Fast Company, “we thought it was a way to differentiate–to make things come alive and more approachable.”

How does Bing select which photo they want on their home page? Bing has a meeting every few weeks with a group of decision makers who review tons of user submitted photos and other photography and then pick the best to show on their home page. They don’t just look for pretty and interesting photos, they look for images that “makes you want to find out more about it,” said Horstmanshof.

After the photos are selected, a Bing writer adds the hotspots over the images and the background is scheduled in. The hotspots, along with the image, purpose is to drive more queries and show off Bing’s search capabilities.

The key here is to bring searchers back daily to use Bing more and more. I should note that Bing had the backgrounds and hotspots well before Bing was even a brand. Microsoft launched these background and hotspots under the “Live Search” brand, which failed to help Microsoft capture much market share. Bing, on the other hand, has been successful in increasing market share over the years.

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 Stories:

• Microsoft Launches A New Loyalty Program: Bing Rewards
• Goodbye To Microsoft’s SearchPerks, “Search & Give” Programs
• Bing Drops Cashback Program
• Microsoft “Cashback” Program Aims To Lure Commercial Shoppers With Rebates, Marketers With CPA Model

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 and our marketing team saw a great opportunity to work with Rovio to develop an integrated campaign that would engage Angry Birds fans with Bing and help them get to new levels,” said Lisa Gurry, director of Bing.

The deal has Bing appearing in the Angry Birds and Angry Birds Seasons applications, with contextual Bing searches integrated to help players find solutions for difficult levels and find the Golden Eggs. Bing says the integration will provide players with “over a hundred clues” to speeding through levels. It will last for “several months.”

“Bing helps people make informed decisions and now millions of Angry Birds fans can experience Bing to help them excel at the game,” wrote Wibe Wagemans of Bing Mobile, in a blog post about the deal.

Additionally, Bing is distributing a four video series featuring the Angry Birds characters. In the videos, the pigs use Bing to plot ways to steal eggs from the hapless birds.

The videos will be distributed via the YouTube channels of Bing and Rovio.

Though Bing has been praised for providing a quality search experience, it’s still working to gain a foothold in the popular imagination. Bing saw a 13% surge in searches in January, according to Comscore, but Google still dominates with 66% of overall search share.

• 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 during the current season with things like the Bing National Tailgating Championship, visibility during Monday Night Football and SportsCenter broadcasts, advertising on Sports Illustrated‘s website, and now this latest push.

Has it worked? A spokesperson says Bing has seen a 17% jump in traffic among the 50+ million football fans tracked by comScore (compared to the three months before the NFL season began). And, via testing at its NFL tailgating events, Bing’s awareness is up 29% and favorability has increased 24%.

Bing has also pushed several football-related features into its search experience. We recently wrote about the addition of FanSnap ticket inventory to Bing’s search results, and Bing shared about a half-dozen others in a blog post late Friday afternoon.

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 third largest advertiser, based on a comScore report. But comScore tells me this isn’t so.

“Make-my-baby was not one of the top advertisers on Facebook,” emailed spokesperson Andrew Lipsman.

Postscript (2:40ET): Facebook also tells me that Make My Baby isn’t an advertiser at all. From an email that spokesperson Brandon McCormick sent:

Not only is make-my-baby.com not one of our largest advertisers, they are not an advertiser at all.  In fact, their practices are against our ad policies and would be rejected as a result.  This is true whether they tried to run ads with us or an affiliate did.

Postscript (3:00 ET): I’ve now got a copy of the comScore report. It looks at total display ad impressions for the “social networking” category in the third quarter of last year. That category includes buys on MySpace and Facebook (and according to comScore, a few smaller social networking sites).

Make-My-Baby.com is indeed the number three on this list, which means it is the third biggest SOCIAL NETWORKING advertiser according to comScore but not necessarily the third biggest Facebook advertiser (nor did Ad Age explicitly say this). Most ad impressions in this category apparently come from Facebook, but in this case, apparently its MySpace buys that were putting Make-My-Baby tops, given Facebook is denying this company advertised at all. But I’m checking on that.

Bing Affiliate Outed By Google

The Ad Age article caught the attention of the head of Google’s search spam fighting team — and unofficial defender of all things Google — Matt Cutts. Cutts did a post noting that the Make-My-Baby site had terms that required a switch to Bing:

If make-my-baby.com is Facebook’s 3rd biggest advertiser, I wonder how many people are installing this software without reading the fine print that says “Installing the toolbar includes managing the browser default search settings and setting your homepage to bing.com” ?

Read Write Web picked up on Cutts’ post, spreading the news about the tricky move. From there, it attracted further attention on the news aggregator Techmeme.

Tricky Switch

Actually, you didn’t have to drill into the fine print of the site’s terms and conditions page to learn this. When you’d first visit the site, you’d get a big “Plugin Required” message as shown above [picture from Read Write Web, as the original site is now down]. Directly below that was a message that explained that a toolbar would be installed and implying that your search provider and home page would be switched to Bing.

Still, to me, it was a pretty tricky move. There was no easy way to “exit out” from having the plugin installed other than to close the page itself. It’s likely plenty of people installed the toolbar when they might not have wanted to — and were switched to Bing.

Bing Fires Affiliate, Er, Publisher

I asked Bing about the affiliate. It commented:

Distribution deals and affiliate programs are an important part of how all search engines introduce their products to customers. That said, we have been made aware of some practices that are in conflict with Bing’s principles and are addressing them directly with this affiliate partner.

It’s not clear if the affiliate will be dropped entirely. The specific landing page people were switched to, http://mmb.bingstart.com, continues to operate with a “ZUGO” code that stands for what appears to be Make-My-Baby’s parent company. That suggests the affiliate may still be earning for searches.

Postscript (2:15 ET): Bing has now sent an updated statement:

Distribution deals and affiliate programs are an important part of how all search engines introduce their product to customers.   That said, we have been made aware of some practices from a specific publisher that are not compliant with the guidelines, best practices and principles put in place by Bing.  As a result, the relationship with this publisher will be terminated.

I’ve bolded the key change. Rather than “address” issues, Bing is now terminating the relationship. Bing also says the company wasn’t an affiliate but rather “a publisher who has a relationship with one of our distribution partners.”

I’m assuming this means that Make-My-Baby was a distribution partner for the Zugo toolbar and that Bing will retain a relationship with Zugo but has effectively told Zugo to fire Make-My-Baby.

Bing declined to answer how long it has been running this type of affiliate program, how it solicits people to be in it (is there a self-serve option?) or how much it pays.

Postscript (5:25 ET): OK, I have some more answers from Bing. Make-My-Baby was an affiliate of Zugo. I asked how Bing could directly fire a Zugo affiliate and was given a non-answer:

In any Bing distribution program, there are guidelines that must be followed to ensure a positive experience for customers.  We were made aware of a particular publisher who was not in compliance with those guidelines, and that publisher is no longer part of this program.

The actual answer remains that Bing probably cannot “fire” a Zugo affiliate but rather can tell Zugo that one of its affiliates is violating Bing’s distribution requirements to pressure Zugo to act.

As for Zugo, Iwas told it is not an affiliate but rather distribution partner. What’s the difference? Bing said:

It’s really a distinction without a difference.

Bing also confirmed that it continues to have a relationship with Zugo. That also means that all the people who had their pages changed by Make-My-Baby will continue to get redirected to the benefit of both Zugo and Bing, as best I can tell, despite the fact that they were obtained in a way that Bing disagrees with.

Bing: Google Did It Too!

When Bing emailed me with info for the 5:25ET postscript I integrated above, it also said:

No one, including Google who also uses distribution channels like OurBabyMaker.com, wants to have their brand associated with a negative customer experience.

Hmm. OK, I’ll bite. I headed over to that site:

Its not run by Google. It is run by IAC, which has distribution deals with Google, especially through toolbars that it owns.

Installing the software instantly caused my anti-virus software to jump in and scream that it wouldn’t let me install it. I’m not inclined to test it more. But if I had, I get the impression I’d have ended up with the Smiley Central toolbar or some variant, which may have shifted my defaults over to Ask (complete with Google ads) or perhaps to Google. I’m checking with Google on this.

Ben Edelman — who has consulted for Microsoft in the past and is involved in a lawsuit against Google — has documented some of the changes that the IAC toolbar has done on the past (see here and here)

Bing & Buying Traffic

Bing has tried a variety of things to attract searchers to its search engine, most recently, Bing Rewards — which gives credits that can be redeemed for prizes. SearchPerks was an earlier incarnation of that. Cashback gave discounts on purchases.

Of course, Bing is not alone in trying to buy search traffic. Google has done plenty of distribution deals itself. In fact, like many search engines back in the late 1990s, Google even ran its own affiliate program that paid $0.03 for each search an affiliate generated.

Ah, but Google never tricked anyone into changing their defaults! Sure, nothing like what the Bing affiliate above was doing comes immediately to mind, though I’m sure there were similar examples that didn’t get wide attention. But then again, Google — which preaches about how everything should be “open” and that people should have choice — is hardly squeaky clean when it comes to generating search traffic.

Google & Buying Traffic

Google & Dell’s Revenue-Generating URL Error Pages Drawing Fire covers a deal — now ended — with Dell that caused some people to wonder why they’d end up on ad-filled pages powered by Google, when entering an incorrect URL.

Hey Firefox – Let Us Pick Our Own Search Engine! covers how Google has long been the default search engine on Firefox — no need to “trick” anyone into this, since Google bought that distribution, despite arguing that the EU should force Microsoft to make people choose in Internet Explorer. Bing is finally being allowed as a choice on Firefox after years of being blocked — and then, not until Firefox 4 (see Firefox 4 To Add Bing As Search Option).

Enough With The Switching

None of this excuses what the Bing affiliate was doing. Ideally, I’d like to see both Bing and Google come together on a common site where people could go and easily detect if their search provider or home page has been changed in a way they don’t like — and easily fix that. Both companies have fought directly and through proxies to change user settings. I’ve had my fill of emails from people confused about what happened to them, when this type of switch happens.