Microsoft Shuttering Bing Ads Express

Bing Ads Express, Microsoft’s program to encourage small businesses to adopt the paid search platform, will be sunsetted this summer.

Launched just last October and modeled on Google’s own AdWords Express, the program was designed to simplify and automate paid search advertising across the Yahoo Bing Network.

Small and local businesses could use their Facebook pages as a landing page in lieu of having their own dedicated websites. Expanded targeting options were rolled out as recently as April. Apparently it wasn’t enough.

In a blog post announcing the shutdown, Bing Ads Express product lead, Ginny Sandhu wrote of the decision to shutter the product, “We know customers, both big and small, value the ability to control their marketing efforts and by providing the full range of options with Bing Ads, customers will be able to create detailed, targeted campaigns that promote their business on Bing, Yahoo and partner sites.”

Bing Ads Express will close down on July 30th, after which point Bing Ads Express customers will no longer have access to their account information. Past Express customers will need to create a new Bing Ads account and set up new campaigns. Bing Ads Support is available to those making the transition.

Microsoft has been investing in the Bing Ads platform, adding new reporting capabilities, live chat support, updates to its editor, and most recently the long-awaited URL auto-tagging for Google Analytics integration. Perhaps the thinking is to dedicate more resources to the main platform and work to bring on smaller businesses in a more scalable fashion than Bing Ads Express was able to accomplish.