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New PPC Report: Bing Ads Vs. Google AdWords In 6 US Verticals

Ginny Marvin on March 20, 2013 at 8:15 am

AdGooroo has released a new study titled Yahoo! Bing PPC Performance Metrics that analyzes advertiser participation and performance metrics on the Yahoo! Bing network through Bing Ads compared to Google AdWords. The study looked at U.S. advertisers in six verticals during Q312.

Backing up one of the loudest complaints among advertisers about the Yahoo! Bing network, the study found that AdWords out-delivered Bing Ads by serving 7.3 million more ad impressions in the Shopping and Classified category.

A surprise, however, was to see Bing Ads come out ahead in the Financial Services category with an edge of over a million ad impressions. The study authors speculate that this lead is driven by the popularity of financial reporting on the Yahoo! and MSN portals, which direct reader searches to the Yahoo! Bing engine. In fact, AdWords doesn’t have a significant lead in impression serving in the other four verticals either.

In looking at click through rates (CTRs), AdWords generated anywhere from 2.4 to 5.2 times higher CTRs in each of the six verticals. The study points to a better ad serving system by AdWords s a potential reason for the stronger CTRs. However, another consideration is the level of campaign optimization advertisers put toward their AdWords campaigns versus their Bing Ads campaigns.

There were pockets of advertisers who did see higher CTRs on Bing Ads:

Nearly 10% of the financial services advertisers who ran campaigns on both engines, including Citicards and Fidelity Life, experienced higher CTRs on Yahoo! Bing.
Roughly 8% of overlapping travel sector advertisers saw higher CTRs from Bing Ads, including Hilton HHonors, Days Inn and Fun Jet.
Even a handful of Shopping and Classified advertisers—JCPenney, QVC, Old Navy, K-Mart and Shutterfly among them—had higher CTRs through Bing Ads.

Advertisers consistently paid fairly substantial premiums on AdWords. The biggest average cost per click discrepancy was in the Computer and Internet vertical, with advertisers paying an average 117% more per click on AdWords than on Bing Ads.

So how many advertisers are running campaigns on both engines? Of the 39,000 advertisers included in the study who ran paid search campaigns on AdWords, 55% of them also had campaigns on Bing Ads during that time. The greatest level of crossover was in the Shopping and Classified and Financial Services categories, with the other four categories lagging in their use of the Bing Ads platform. That of course means less competition for the advertisers in those verticals who are running campaigns on Bing Ads.

Nearly one third of U.S. search queries are conducted on Bing or Yahoo! according to the latest comScore numbers. The full report from AdGooroo can be downloaded here.

Correction: The original article stated that AdWords served more than 7.3 ad impressions than Bing Ads in Q3. This has been corrected to reflect that AdWords served more than 7.3 more ad impressions in the Shopping and Classified vertical.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media's Editor-in-Chief, managing day-to-day editorial operations across all of our publications. Ginny writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, she has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.