Bing Ads Sneak Peeks Editor Updates, Acknowledges Burning Mac Version Question

Microsoft’s Ping Jen has posted a look at upcoming changes to Bing Ads Editor, the desktop tool for managing Bing Ads campaigns. The changes include an updated user interface (UI) and faster data uploading.

The UI updates are designed to make the editor align with “what you’re already familiar with.” In other words, your “muscle memory” has already been trained by AdWords Editor, so Bing Ads Editor’s new navigation will mirror AdWords Editor.

Here’s how it looks today:

And here is the preview of the new navigation structure that’s nearly identical to AdWords Editor:

Bing Ads’ screenshot above also shows the additional workspace that will be provided.

As for speed, uploading speed will match the improvements Bing Ads made to the editor’s downloading speed back in the Fall of 2012.

A Mac Version?

Updates like this beg the question: When is a Mac version of Bing Ads Editor coming?

Ping Jen ends his post previewing the Editor updates by saying, “This is the first wave of improvements coming out of this initiative, and has been powered directly by your support and feedback.” I asked if a Mac version will be among the improvements and received this statement from a Microsoft spokesperson:

“Bing Ads is actively working on a solution to address the need for a Mac version of Bing Ads Editor, but we don’t have anything more to share at this time.”

An optimist might take that statement and look at the efforts shown above as confirmation that Microsoft is truly working on (and possibly close to) releasing a Mac version. A pessimist might wonder how it could possibly take this long to make it happen and brush off Microsoft’s statement as “PR speak”.

A version of Editor for Mac users must be near the top of the request list for Bing Ads Editor. A third party eventually stepped in to addressed the other major user request to be able to auto-tag Bing URLs so that campaign performance can be tracked and analyzed in Google Analytics. We’ll have to wait to see if Mac users will get what they want.