In recent months, Bing Ads has released several notable updates. While most of these entail much-awaited parity with AdWords features, you may find them useful for improving your PPC management efforts in Bing.
In this article, we’ll highlight Bing’s updates from the past six months.
Offline Conversion Import (September 2017)
The launch of offline conversion import marks a major step in expanding conversion tracking beyond what can directly be tracked via website pageviews and events. In addition, this feature marks a major catch-up with capabilities Google and Facebook have offered for a while.
Users can now upload conversion data associated with a Microsoft Click ID from an initial pageview. Then, conversion totals and values can be associated with the ads and keywords that led to a purchase or lead. Possible uses for this feature include tracking phone calls and importing CRM data.
County Targeting (October 2017)
This update brings U.S. counties to the list of geographic locations that can be used in geographic targeting. When running local PPC campaigns, sometimes targeting by county is necessary. For instance, a service provider may only be licensed to work in certain counties.
In the past, you’d have to work around the lack of county targeting by adding zip codes or cities or approximating a radius around the desired location. We’re glad to see Bing expanding the options for geotargeting and hope to see them continue to add more.
Dynamic Search Ads (October 2017)
Dynamic search ads offer a useful method to prospect for keywords not already in your campaigns, as well as a way to cover potential queries for sites with extensive product listings. With this rollout, Bing offers similar capabilities to AdWords’ Dynamic Search Ads, including auto-populated ad titles based on keywords and the ability to segment ad groups by categories or specific pages.
See instructions for setting up Dynamic Search Ads in Bing Ads.
Improved Multi-Account Linking (November 2017)
Anyone who’s managed multiple Bing Ads accounts in an agency setting has likely run into issues linking or unlinking accounts. In the past, the process has had limitations, such as the ability for only one agency account to manage an individual account.
With updated multi-linking, anyone with a Bing Ads customer login can link to or have their account linked to another customer. Up to five individual customers can be linked to a single account at the same time. In addition, anyone with access to the account can switch to controlling billing without any lapse in ad activity.
Ad Countdowns (November 2017)
Whether running a sale or promoting an event, countdowns are helpful to create a sense of urgency. This feature allows you to specify a time to count down to. The ad text will automatically updating with the number of days, hours, and finally minutes as the designated time approaches.
See instructions for setting up an ad countdown.
Account Level Extension Associations (December 2017)
In another feature similar to Google, Bing now lets you associate ad extensions on the account level. Previously, being able to only associate them on the campaign or ad set level required that you copy extensions to every campaign if using the same ones across the account. Note that call extensions do not yet have this option.
Audience Segmentation (January 2018)
This feature allows better insight into how subsets of people are responding to your ads, including remarketing, in-market, and custom audiences. You can segment anywhere from campaign level to ad or keyword level. An additional segment benchmarks data against a group of people who aren’t in any of your audiences.
The data can help show how certain audiences are responding to ad messaging, revealing the potential for targeting certain groups with different copy. In addition, you may see keywords that perform especially well for remarketing audiences, possibly indicating these could work best in an RLSA campaign. Finally, performance can inform bid modifiers for various audiences.
See more details at Search Engine Land.
Which of these updates do you find the most useful? What features would you like to see Bing add? Let us know in the comments below!
