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Microsoft Ads vs Google Ads: Why Do Your Clients Need To Be On Both?

When you hear PPC advertising, it’s not uncommon to think: Microsoft Ads vs Google Ads.

Questions arise such as:

Which platform has more reach?
Is Bing less expensive?
Which has more targeting capabilities?
Which will produce more conversions and revenue?

Many PPC professionals view the two platforms as competing against each other, rather than viewing them as Google Ads plus Bing Ads.

The dominance of Google Ads in the digital advertising landscape

As the go-to platform for online advertising, Google Ads harbour most of the search engine market compared to the Microsoft search engine providing businesses with the opportunity to connect with their target audience.

It’s not a secret that Google has far more reach than any other search engine. Through Google search, your ads will show on Google itself, as well as sites within the search partner network (like YouTube).

Google’s reach will always be its greatest advantages.

Microsoft Ads: the potential for your agency clients

However, solely focusing on Google Ads means missing opportunities to engage with more than a billion users on Microsoft Advertising.

As Microsoft Advertising’s largest global channel partner, we’ll run through the potential Microsoft Advertising could have on your agency clients and why you should be using them in synergy with other ad platforms such as Google Ads.

Most advertisers go straight to Google for its larger audience base and higher levels of traffic, making it a first choice for a client’s PPC campaign.

The important point we’re trying to make here, is bringing awareness to the untapped potential of Microsoft Advertising, making it another viable option for clients’ marketing goals.

There are some specific industries or campaigns where it could benefit from running a PPC campaign on Microsoft Ads too.

Introduction to the Microsoft Ads Platform

The concept behind both platforms is essentially the same. Both are pay-per-click advertising platforms designed to help businesses reach chosen audiences, drive traffic and increase revenue.

Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) is an online advertising platform developed by Microsoft. It allows advertisers to bid on display ads, service offers, product listings, and videos to web users.

The platform provides pay-per-click advertising on search engines such as Bing, Yahoo!, and DuckDuckGo, as well as other websites and mobile apps. Microsoft Advertising is a way of putting your business in front of a large audience with paid advertisements.

Unique features and advantages of Microsoft Ads

Each platform has its unique opportunities and can be used in synergy to maximise reach and marketers need to embrace this.

Let’s dive into an overview of the unique features and advantages of Microsoft Ads.

Less competition = lower cost of advertising. Fewer advertisers are bidding on keywords through Microsoft Ads, and the cost per click is generally lower resulting in lower conversion costs.
Aside from the cost of advertising, the fact that competitors are less likely to advertise through Microsoft Advertising, enables you to control the space.
A more unique feature you might be unaware of, the traffic quality is often higher than on Google. Microsoft has high-quality desktop traffic and is still very much a desktop-oriented search engine, you’re more likely to catch people sitting at their desks.
Microsoft Ads often perform well in certain demographics, especially older users or those from a specific industry. If your target audience aligns with the demographic profile of Bing it could be a waste to not advertise on that platform.

Audience demographics

Google is known to dominate the search engine market however advertisers often underestimate the influence of Microsoft’s search engine. The Microsoft Network is growing quickly, let’s look at the data:

Bing now has 34% of the desktop search engine market share worldwide
There are 5.4 billion monthly searches conducted on the Bing Network
136 million unique searches use the Bing Network.

Bing provides a significant opportunity to reach a sizable and diverse audience that may be untapped by Google Ads.

Bing users tend to have higher disposable incomes and spend more money online, making them an attractive target audience for advertisers. Leveraging this advantage allows you to tap into a demographic different from those on Google Ads

Integration with other Microsoft products

A distinct advantage of Microsoft Advertising is the seamless integration with the Microsoft ecosystem. The vast ecosystem provides advertisers the opportunity to target consumers across multiple touchpoints from Windows, Office 365, Outlook, Xbox and more.

An example could be, leveraging Microsoft Ads to display your ads on premium Microsoft properties, such as MSN, Outlook and Microsoft Edge browser. Integrating this allows you to increase reach and engage with a potential customer base whilst using Microsoft’s suite of products, enhancing the likelihood of conversions.

If you’re also using Microsoft Advertising Intelligence or have an existing presence on LinkedIn, you can seamlessly sync your campaigns and data between platforms. Having a cohesive integration provides valuable insights, streamlining your marketing efforts and simplifying cross-channel campaign management.

Cost-effectiveness compared to Google Ads

Are Microsoft Ads more cost-effective compared to Google Ads?

Advertisers on Microsoft generally have less competition on bidding and as a result, generate more return on investment (ROI) as each click tends to be cost-effective. Less traffic could mean, however, you’ll have to pay more to gain conversions.

Are Google Ads more expensive? Yes, but they have a huge reach. It’s difficult to gauge a platform’s benefits over the other since conversion rates could vary from one business to another.

Also, campaign budget, keyword density and demographics could influence the results.

Powerful keyword targeting

Targeting is a game-changer in digital advertising, enabling you to reach specific audiences accurately.

The search volume gap between Google Ads and Microsoft Ads is a significant differentiator. If a user is going for high search volume terms they usually rely on Google ads to provide necessary scale. However, incorporating Bing Ads can still be very effective for:

Long tail keywords with lower competition
Geotargeting smaller regions
Certain demographics which aren’t available on Google Ads
New products with minimal search history

Microsoft Advertising provides endless user targeting, budgeting, and ad placement possibilities through its audience and search campaigns with a seamless set-up process.

The audience-based targeting is similar across both platforms. Microsoft Advertising exclusively offers LinkedIn profile targeting and custom audiences. Linkedin targeting allows advertisers to target according to industry, company and job function, this is ideal for a B2B client.

Microsoft reporting tool and analytics

Microsoft offers their own Microsoft analytics tool and Microsoft reporting tool to analyse historical and real-time data, trends and patterns to help inform decisions correctly. Microsoft Clarity is a free website analytics tool that provides insight into user behaviour and engagement on your landing pages.

It can help businesses better understand their customer journey, the path to conversion, and engagement on their ad landing pages. Clarity tracks clicks, scrolls, and movements on landing pages and enables users to analyse the behaviour across channels, campaigns and browsers.

Clarity was created to provide advertisers with a deeper understanding of landing page engagements, and post-click behaviour, empowering them with deeper insights and a seamless integration. Clarity is integrated with Microsoft Advertising, and powered by the existing JavaScript Universal Event Tracking (UET) tag you place across your website. The tool provides session recordings, heat maps, and a powerful analysis dashboard.

The synergy of Microsoft Ads and Google Ads

As we’ve seen in this article, both Google Ads and Microsoft Ads have their advantages. Incorporating a synergy between them is proving to be a game-changer for businesses looking to maximise their visibility

Combining the strengths of Microsoft Ads and Google Ads

Google Ads is typically the first choice for marketers however, Microsoft Ads offers that unique demographic reach, providing access to a distinct user base.

Implementing both these advertising platforms for your campaigns allows businesses to cast a wider net, tap into diverse audience segments and optimise and spread their advertising budget effectively.

Merging the strength of Google’s reach with Microsoft’s cost-effective and demographic-specific advantages means marketers can have a strategy across both, maximising their impact and delivering results.

Broadening audience reach

Diversifying your advertising channels can expand your customer base and drive conversions from an audience you neglected through exclusive reliance on Google Ads.

Leveraging unique user behaviour on each platform

To leverage the unique users between them both, you can start by identifying the strengths of each platform. For example, Google Ads is known for its wide reach and AI-powered ad solutions, on the other hand, Microsoft Ads offers features to increase brand awareness through audience ads.

Combining both platforms’ strengths, you can create an effective advertising strategy.

Use Google Ads to drive traffic to your landing page: you can use Google Ads to target users who are searching for keywords related to your business and drive them to your website.
Use Microsoft Ads, on the other hand, to increase brand awareness: Microsoft Ads offer features to increase brand awareness through Audience Ads. You can use these features to target users who are likely to be interested in your business and increase your brand awareness.
Combine both platforms to maximise your reach: By combining Google Ads and Microsoft Ads, you can maximise your reach and target a wider audience.

Maximising ad visibility across search engines

It doesn’t have to be Google Ads vs Microsoft Ads.

Google Ads has a huge user pool however, Microsoft Ads can reach the millions of potential customers that Google ads can’t, the two advertising platforms can work in synergy with each other to maximise ad visibility across search engines.

Marketers need to explore alternative platforms to diversify their strategies. Any agency looking to grow and scale its business should be open to considering alternatives to go alongside the typical first choice of exclusively using Google Ads.

If you’re looking for more insight into Microsoft Advertising and how our Diginius Agency Partner Program can help support you, feel free to contact us or learn more here.