As Microsoft continues to shift its revenue focus away from software licensing and towards ad clicks, Bing is becoming an increasingly important part of the company. This can be seen through Microsoft’s improvement of its search engine throughout the last year, adding a number of useful features and improvements.
The effort to better Bing doesn’t end with the consumer however, for a number of changes are to be made to Redmond’s Bing Ads platform throughout the coming year. These will allow for a more comprehensive experience, making a more enticing package overall for advertisers the world over.
To detail these changes, some engineers from Bing Ads (who are working on these improvements) have given their take on the situation. To start, Gagan Chopra, Principal PM Manager of Bing Ads Platform – Search Marketplace, states,
“While our primary focus continues to be on delivering quality click volume (with great ROI) this year, we’ll invest in personalizing ad results for consumers (for example, age and gender), enabling audience targeting based on consumer activities on advertiser properties (example remarketing), richer and personalized ad compositions, and an acceleration in releases to global market. “
This follows a trend that has been set by the other major search engine providers in the past, whereby more personalized results are delivered to the end user, through the collection of usage data, in the hope that this will lead to more effective demonstration and results. This isn’t the end of things however, as Dare Obasanjo, Principal PM Manager of Bing Ads Platform – Campaigns, says,
“With the API, we’re working on making SDKs available in the most popular programming languages to reduce the development costs and time to market for customers who integrate with our platform via APIs.”
The focus isn’t just on making the end advertisement more customized to the interests of each unique user, but also to make the process of creating that ad easier to implement. This ought to mean that, no matter the coding proficiencies of a firm’s IT staff, Bing Ads should be a viable proposition, in an area where its competitors may not be. This utility will be further enhanced, as Tak Yan, Principal PM Manager of Bing Ads Platform – Ad Products, says,
“We will also be rolling out new extensions that you will be excited about, such as App Extensions and App Install Ads”
This will allow for more custom performance metrics and greater flexibility overall for the platform, meaning that even those with special needs in this space will be accommodated, no matter what their business. Of course however, delivering more utility and scope is nothing without the analytical tools to help businesses expand their ad presence online, as Erez Barak, Principal PM of Bing Ads Platform – Analytics, shows,
“We know that you want to reach the right audience, so we’ll be delivering the ability to create and optimize the experience for audience lists with our ‘Remarketing’ capabilities.”
This will provide more ‘rich’ information, allowing for the deeper insights that enable the creation of well-targeted advertisements. A clear focus of the team, these improvements are particularly significant in their implications for the rest of the platform, as everything flows from them.
These three focuses: personalization, insight and compatibility, will drive Bing Ads in 2015. No doubt, in the year to come, the platform will become even more of a player to be reckoned with, in what has become an intensely competitive market. If you wish to read the rest of the team’s insights, you can do so here.
Could your firm benefit from any of these changes? Let us know in the comments below.
