Bing Ads has been on the back foot against the competition for a while now. When it comes to online advertising, others don’t respect privacy quite as much as Microsoft. They search emails while Microsoft has resisted doing so. Well, now Microsoft is getting in on the act a little more according to a new blog post. To generate revenue from an ad, a company needs two things: views and clicks. Microsoft can’t compete on views, but it may now be able to compete on clicks.
Bing Ads has just introduced new demographic targeting options to allow companies to target their ads based on search results. As a result, on average, this should lead to twice as many people seeing Bing ads that interest them. Once they’re interested, the searcher will invariably click on that ad. This in turn increases revenue for the advertiser.
In order to enable these options, the Bing Ads customer should set up targeting rules under “Advanced targeting options”. These will allow targeted ads to appear to specific genders or age groups when they are searching. As the targeting is based on search behavior, no personal information is shared. Everything is done through algorithms. But this may not be enough for some. These options are currently only available to US customers. However, they’re expected to spread worldwide very soon.
Could these changes be related to the recent deal where employees from the Bing Display Ads department transferred over to AOL? In return, Microsoft became the default search engine on AOL websites.
How do you feel about targeted ads? Do they make you concerned about your privacy or do you welcome more relevant content? Is this going too far down the “Scroogled” path? Perhaps this is the best way to keep the web free? Let us know in the comments below.
