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:
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!