Bing Ads Android App Debuts: A Test Drive

Bing Ads’ Android app, hinted about last month, is now available in the Google play store, which means Bing has beat Google AdWords at bringing out apps for both major mobile operating systems (not that anyone’s keeping score). Bing Ads launched its iOS app in April; Google’s Android app for AdWords came out in March.

I have been testing out the Bing Ads app for Android on a couple of accounts over the past few weeks, with beta access courtesy of the Bing Ads team.

First, I’ll mention that while I do have an Android device, I am a daily iPhone user and am already very familiar with the iOS app. As a novice Android user, I can say the new Android app was just as easy and intuitive to use. The other thing to note is that I’m using Bing Ads-provided screenshots in this article because one, I’m traveling and didn’t have my own on hand, and two, this way I didn’t have to anonymize anything.

Let’s dive in. Once you log in (which I found relatively painless compared to the Microsoft account loop you can get into on desktop) and click on an account name, a dashboard shows the date range and a block of key metrics. What’s really useful is that it shows the percentage change for each metric compared to the previous period of the date range selected.

You’ll also notice in the screenshot below that Clicks has a blue line under it and CTR a green line. Those lines then correspond to the metrics shown in the line graph below. You can easily change which metrics you want to compare in the chart by tapping on a metric block. Tapping and swiping anywhere along the line graph displays the numbers for each metric.

Scroll down on the dashboard to click into other levels of your account. At the campaign overview screen, you can easily filter campaigns to see only those enabled (all and paused campaigns are the other filters available). The date range adjustment is available on every screen, as well.

At the campaign overview level, you’re able to get a snapshot of campaign performance across several metrics (Only one metric is available in this view in the iOS app at this time). Again, what is really helpful here is that the percentage change data is shown across each metric.

Tapping on any of the campaigns brings up a campaign view that looks very much like the main account dashboard — a summary block of performance metrics, a line graph, etc. — and again, it’s easy to adjust the metrics and date range and get a good view of campaign performance. You can then scroll down to dig into ad groups, ads or keywords in that campaign.

What I really like about the Android app is that you can get views of entities across campaigns, as opposed to the iOS app, in which you can only see ads or ad groups within one campaign. The All Enabled Ads view, for example, lists which campaign and ad group each ad is in, along with performance metrics.

The great benefit of both versions of Bing Ads apps is that they provide a great user experience for getting quick views of how things are performing. The weakness comes in when you want to take action.

You can adjust budgets and bids and pause and enable entities in both Bing apps. At this point, however, the apps are not designed to take action at scale. To make adjustments, you have to do it at each individual entity level by clicking “Settings” rather than being able to click multiple items at an overview level. So for example, if you want to pause six keywords, you have to click through to each of the keywords and then go to Settings on each to accomplish that.

The benefit lies in an easy-to-navigate on-the-go view of how things are performing in your accounts. You can also get alerts if your credit card expires and adjust the order in which metrics are displayed by going to the main Settings screen. The Bing Ads Android app is available in the Play store now.