Get Started With Bing’s In-Market Audiences for Search

After a beta in the U.S. in 2017, In-Market Audiences are available in Bing! (Unfortunately, this feature is only available for U.S. advertisers at this point.) This audience type allows advertisers to target folks who have exhibited potential buying behavior based on search trends and history. These audiences can eliminate the need for advertisers to provide their own lists and business data for campaigns. Awesome, right!?

Let’s dive into who you can target with these new audiences and how to get started.

What Categories are Available for In-Market Audiences?

There are currently 171 options available for In-Market Audiences. Below are the top-level categories available (at the time of publication):

Apparel & Accessories
Arts & Entertainment
Autos & Vehicles
Baby & Children’s Products
Beauty Products & Services
Business Services
Computers & Peripherals
Consumer Electronics
Education
Employment
Financial Services
Gifts & Occasions
Hobbies & Leisure
Home & Garden
Personal Services
Real Estate
Social Software
Sports & Fitness
Telecom
Travel

Within each of these categories, there are additional drill downs. For example, within Apparel & Accessories, there are categories for activewear, formal wear, bridal, men’s apparel,  swimwear, and shoes.

If you want to see a full list of targeting options available, here is a downloadable spreadsheet from Bing.

Getting Started With In-Market Audiences for Search

Head to the Audiences tab in your Search campaign.

These audiences need to be applied at the ad group level. Click the “Create Association” button.

Select your ad group and “In Market Audiences” in the dropdown.

Select your In-Market audiences from the list. For targeting, you’ll want to select Bid Only or Target and Bid. It’s important to note that this setting will be applied to ALL audiences for this ad group, not just your In-Market audiences.

You can set a default bid adjustment for new targeting associations if you want to be more aggressive with bids. You can also set any ad group exclusions to make sure you’re not overlapping audiences.

Adding In-Market Audiences to Multiple Ad Groups

If you want to add In-Market Audiences to multiple ad groups easily, head to the ad group tab. Select your ad groups and then use the Edit dropdown and select “Associate with audiences.”

Add and exclude your audiences in the same process as I outlined above.

Quick Tips for Success With In-Market Audiences

  • Bing says that additional industry targeting will be introduced. So if there isn’t an industry for you now, keep checking back.
  • In-Market audiences work with all campaign and ad types, including Bing Shopping and dynamic search ads.
  • These audiences can be used on desktop, mobile and tablets and are available across the entire Bing Ads network, including syndicated search partners.
  • Enhanced CPC can also be used in conjunction with this feature.
  • You can include 1,000 in-market exclusions per account, so you’ll want to choose carefully if you have a large account and plan to use a lot of exclusions.
  • Based on what I could find and see, it doesn’t seem that these audiences are currently supported in Bing Ads Editor.
  • When your audiences begin accruing traffic, you can see the performance levels by navigating to the Audiences tab.

We can’t wait to see what these new audiences can do for our clients!

How are you planning to utilize this new feature? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!