Colbert Goes From 0-To-40 “Bing” Mentions In 2 Minutes, For Charity

Bing bought a pretty funny product placement on the Colbert Report this week. Comedian Stephen Colbert was promised $2,500 for each mention he did of Microsoft’s Bing search engine, with the money to go to his Gulf oil spill relief charity fund. Colbert did 40 within 2 minutes in various ways, racking up $100,000 in […]

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Bing bought a pretty funny product placement on the Colbert Report this week. Comedian Stephen Colbert was promised $2,500 for each mention he did of Microsoft’s Bing search engine, with the money to go to his Gulf oil spill relief charity fund. Colbert did 40 within 2 minutes in various ways, racking up $100,000 in all.

The Huffington Post highlighted the clip, which you can watch below:

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Charity Begins at 11:30
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

I asked Yusuf Mehdi, Senior Vice President, Online Audience Business at Microsoft, about the clip during my keynote talk with him today at SMX Advanced, when we were discussing Bing product placements and other marketing in general.

Mehdi said they gave Colbert full creative license on how he wanted to do it. I’ll say. Perhaps the funniest part was when Colbert said:

Bing is a great web site for doing internet searches. I know that, because I Googled it


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Danny Sullivan
Contributor
Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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