Late last year, Bing released countdowns for ads. This ad feature has been available in Google AdWords for a while and is a much-welcomed addition to Bing Ads.
Countdown customizers let you add a countdown to an event in your Expanded Text Ad. The countdown will automatically update your ads by day, then hour, then minute as the event draws nearer. This type of customizer is drives urgency and gives potential customers greater incentive to click your ad. We’ve seen countdowns work particularly well for sales as well as event registrations.
Ads with countdowns only run while the countdown is relevant. They won’t start running until a specific day and time that you set, and they’ll stop running when the countdown timer expires but will retain the status Enabled.
You can make a countdown ad start running again by either updating the countdown end date to a point in the future or removing the countdown customizer entirely.
How to Create a Countdown in Bing Ads
From the Ads tab, click “Create Ad” and select the ad group you want this ad in. A countdown can appear in title part 1, title part 2, either path and the ad text. Wherever you want the countdown to appear, type a left curly bracket “{“.
Click “Countdown” from the drop-down:
For “Countdown ends”, select the date and enter the time you want the countdown to count down to. When this date and time is reached, the ad will stop running automatically.
If you leave the time box empty, it will default to midnight at the very beginning of the date you selected.
For Countdown starts, enter how many days before the countdown ends date/time you want this ad to start running. The maximum is 999, but I don’t recommend ever using that maximum. If you leave this empty, the countdown will start five days before your countdown ends date/time.
For time zone, you choose whether to base your countdown’s end date and time on your account’s time zone or on the ad viewer’s time zone. For example, if you’re advertising in-store sales at locations in several time zones, you’ll want to use the ad viewer’s time zone. But if you have an online sale that you want to end at a specific time, you’ll want to use your account’s time zone.
Last, you’ll select the language you want the countdown to use in your ad. For example, the countdown could read “3 days” (English), “3 jours” (French), “3 Tage” (German), etc.
Click “Save” and you’ve successfully created a countdown for your ad.
Countdowns and Character Length
The maximum character length of the countdown will vary depending on the language you select and will affect how long the rest of your title part, path, or ad text can be. You can a look at this table to see the countdown character length for each language.
When considering character length, keep in mind that your text will be determined to be too long if any possible countdown makes it go over the maximum character length for that piece of text. Therefore, make sure all possible iterations of the countdown will keep your ad under maximum length.
Bing Ads Countdown Best Practices
1. Don’t use countdowns in all ads in an ad group.
Having only ads with countdowns in an ad group means the ad won’t start running until a certain date and time and will stop running once the countdown ends. This makes it easy to end up having ad groups with no ads running, so it’s recommended to have at least one ad without the countdown in each ad group or make sure you are on top of scheduling new ads to activate as soon as the countdown ads expire.
2. Don’t have multiple countdowns in a single ad if they have different date ranges.
It is possible to have multiple countdowns in one text ad. However, if the countdowns are based on different time ranges the ad will only show when the two time ranges overlap.
3. Choose the right time zone.
Be aware of when the countdown will end for the people viewing the ad. If an event ends at the same time regardless of time zone use your account time zone. If the event end time varies across locations, use the ad viewers time zone.
In conclusion, I love Bing’s countdown feature and I think there are many ways to put this to use in your accounts.
Have you used ad customizers and seen success? Let us know in the comments below!
