Search results matching tag 'Bing'

Bing: It's still here!

1713999 — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:59:00 GMT

Just a few days ago we were having a discussion in the office about Bing and its seemingly terminal beta status... Following a bit of a debate regarding the rationale for leaving something in beta in one market whilst you launch in another (in summary: it enables a test-and-rollout approach for both the technology and the marketing and also enables two rounds of PR, one for the beta and one for full launch) we decided that it couldn't be long until Bing got a full roll-out. In fact the only reason we figured it hadn't already happened, given that the functionality now appears to almost exactly mirror the US 'full Bing experience', was due to Microsoft not wanting to detract from the recent Windows 7 launch.

Well now we're left wishing we'd all started a lottery syndicate, or at least that I had posted our prediction here first, because Bing just went and launched properly in the UK.

As I approached the usual slot I set aside for writing this blog it seemed like the most important thing for me to comment on this week but now I'm actually putting hands to keyboard I'm questioning the importance of the move. After all the product is no different today than it was yesterday and 'beta' as a notion seems increasingly irrelevant - Google leave products in beta for years, as evidenced by the 'feature' that re-introduces the Beta badge in Gmail just in case you got somewhat attached to its presence during the five years that service remained in beta.

What I thought would be more interesting then would be if I revisited my original thoughts on the subject - back when Bing launched I went through five reasons why Bing still has a long way to go. So, how far have they gone?

1. It was ugly. It still is ugly. Sorry, I still can't stomach that logo and still think the start images should be full screen.

2. The launch timing was all fumbled. The first few months of less-than-full functionality mean that many people will have tried a less-than-perfect product. It's not ideal. Now the product is the full version it is important it gets a real marketing push.

3. Google were already catching up. I argued that Google were rapidly catching up with the areas where Bing was supposedly pushing the envelope. Google Options does, to a certain extent, add extra functionality but I'm not sure how many searchers even know of its existence and Squared is very interesting but relatively unknown (and still... you guessed it, in beta).

4. Bing isn't social. Bing still fails to utilize passport data in any way that benefits users although, to be fair, no-one else seems to be doing much in this area either.

5. They just don't get the audience. Interestingly all the signs point towards the fact that Bing is no longer targeting the 'power searcher'. Integration with Ciao and Bing Cashback don't exactly scream 'savvy searcher' but at least Bing seem to be going after a more realistic audience now. Perhaps the audience talk was never any more than PR spin.

The latest (and much more significant) news is that Bing (along with Google) will use Twitter to introduce real-time search to their results and that they will be partnering with the computational engine Wolfram Alpha to provide answers to actual questions. More than anything this at least proves Microsoft's commitment to continuing to push Bing forward - important because almost every other search engine launch feels remarkably static in comparison to Google. It will be interesting to see if Google are working on something of their own to compete with Wolfram...

Twitter Search Deal: Social Networking Now Mainstream

2643242 — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:24:00 GMT

It’s undoubtedly very exciting that Twitter has struck deals with Microsoft and Google which will see people’s tweets added to their respective search engine results.

In certain respects these are landmark deals – rather than a particular search engine trying to take market share off the other, what we’re seeing is two search engines clearly recognising the importance and influence social networking now has within the search marketing space.

The fact is social networking is now mainstream – that the search giants are now actively adding tweets to their search results underlines that.

This isn’t something that has happened over night, and many industry gurus will be quietly thinking ‘I told you so’ and breathing a sigh of relief after years of trying to convince advertisers to take social networking seriously.

In recent years we’ve seen ideas such as desktop search and search content ads fall by the wayside as search companies try to increase revenues and improve user experience.

This latest Twitter deal will be different as it offers something in search results that is incredibly useful to users - opinions, real stories and snippets of information that will help them to navigate the web better, purchase products/services that are right for them, and warn them off anything that perhaps sounds too good to be true.

The integration of tweets into search results needs to be done properly to avoid diluting the quality of search results. ‘Bing’ especially, has spent a lot of time improving relevance.

But for brands, the development means they'll have an even bigger job on their hands as user opinion spreads even further.

Author: Tim Cook, Group Account Director, CheezeDMG - www.cheezedmg.com, twitter.com/Cheezedmg

Real Time Search - Time to Get Serious!

980070 — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:38:00 GMT

There’s already been a lot of coverage about the Twitter deals with Bing and Google announced in the last couple of days and waking up this morning the day after Windows 7 launched and Nick Griffin made an arse of himself on Question Time, just goes to show how important these innovations are.

Trending on Twitter 10 minutes ago (writing at 10.06am on Friday 23rd October) were “Windows 7” and “Nick Griffin” as well as “BBC” “#bbcqt” and “Jan Moir”. All the tweets using those keywords are relating to something that’s happened very recently and are in large part conveying some kind of sentiment about different events or news.

Over two years ago Danny Sullivan and other search marketing luminaries attended a conference I’d organised, the after party of which was held on the same night and 100 yards away from where a car bomb had been planted outside a nightclub on the Haymarket.

Luckily it didn’t go off!

The next day Danny wrote an article called the London Car Bombs – The Big Fat Search Failure – in it he complained – quite rightly – that people searching on KWs relating to the previous night’s near miss were getting tired old news/blog results from 2 years before where the bombers had unfortunately been more successful in their mission.

How things have changed.

These new announcements mean we all have access to real-time results from people on the ground and results that have been established over time through solid linking/content criteria.

We now have a choice.

In the last 14 minutes – yes I’m a slow typer – the keywords in Mashable’s post entitled “Apple Fires Back” – about the new Apple ads dissing Windows 7 – have drifted in and now out of the trending topics, demonstrating a hiatus in sharing of that news while the critical mass are still venting on Griffin and Jan Moir’s apology.

This really is a new dawn for not only how we receive and understand information, but also how we disseminate it. Brands need to tap into what's being said about them like never before.

Pro-activity is key now and much more careful thought needs to go into how we include social media into the marketing mix because it’s definitely here to stay!

Online is now number one in the UK

980161 — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:47:00 GMT

Online commands respect : Another IAB Ad Spend report, another milestone for online – this time the big one

We released the IAB Ad Spend results today, with the record breaking news that not only has Ad Spend grown again – as it has every half year since we launched the survey in 1998 – but we have finally done what media pundits have been guessing and betting on for years. That is we are now the largest medium in the UK, with 23.5% share of all media spend now being spent on online display, classifieds and search. We are larger than TV not by a fraction, but by £113.6 million. We are also now larger than press display by £369 million.

We know that this is happening in a strange market however, with rumours that TV prices are back to 1980s levels (so it’s not just fashion that’s harking back to the good old days of Dynasty-style shoulder pads and studs, but TV prices too) and constant press stories decrying the fall of print circulations, all too often ignoring some of the success stories bucking the trend in both of these media. But the important thing for us here at the IAB, and the reason why we are very proud of our industry, is the proof that when the going gets tough, online can more than hold its own against other media. Budgets are being cut and prices are falling, but online is maintaining and growing its importance in the media budget.

Just to put the sceptics point of view across, we do present the data splitting press display and classified, so press combined is still the largest media. And we do include search in our figures, which some commentators are quick to point out is maybe not fair when comparing this to display media in particular. But the rise of search agencies with large blue chip clients spending their large blue chip client marketing budgets shows that this is not just an online directory service, it is a core part of the total media and brand marketing mix, not just the online bit. And even though online display did fall a bit on this time last year, though only by 5.2%, it remains the most successful display media in growth terms, with all other display media falling dramatically in this recession, with only cinema at 7.8% decline also getting away with single figures declining growth rates.

At £317 million for the half year to June 2009, online display is showing its strength and we expect it to ride out the rest of the recession well against other display formats. This is an exciting time to be selling online display, as new methods of targeting, behavioural advertising and reach measurements are becoming mainstream and the introduction of UKOM, the online industry’s answer to calls for one source of planning data, is being launched to build further confidence and growth in online display.

Classifieds are growing but are having a mixed time of it, with recruitment classifieds falling from this time last year, but growing from the last six months of 2008. All other classifieds are performing very well online showing growth from the same period last year, and in total classifieds makes up 22% of the online marketing mix, showing the effectiveness of and belief in this medium.

Search is by no means the be all and end all of online, though it has been a medium worth over £1 billion every six months for the last year. And it shows no signs of declining from this. As new offerings such as Bing bring innovation and choice to the market, and new product launches from Google such as FastFlip means this medium keeps being relevant and effective for advertisers.

We at the IAB are very excited for the next six months to see where ad spend will end up for the whole of 2009, even if sadly I won’t be here to announce it as I am leaving to start my own business. However I am very happy that my last week at the IAB sees the announcement of the big news that, perhaps earlier than most of us expected, online is now number 1 in the UK. And I was there at the heart of the industry when it happened.

Follow the IAB on Twitter

YaSoft, BingHoo, YaBing, MicroYa......

980070 — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 07:50:00 GMT

Let’s face it, none of them have a really good ring do they?

What does sound good though is the deal!

When the announcement was made on Wednesday I was judging an SEO award where all the talk was about Google.

For the last 4 years not a week has gone past without someone asking me, “How are you going to increase query share?” & “When are you going to buy Yahoo!?”

We totally understand that in order to attract advertisers to adCenter we needed to have more share to make the return on time investment worth it. We also understand the frustration advertisers have felt at not being able to get their hands on more of what is largely regarded as the highest quality search traffic around.

Well now we’ve entered an agreement with the folks from Sunnyvale and the result is some serious competition in the search space.

Over the years, many an agency rep has told me in the halls of many a conference that they’re willing us on. Competition is key to their success and the success of the industry, creating an exciting market place and giving advertisers choice and control.

We’ve invested millions in adCenter and efficiency tools like the adCenter Desktop and the ground breaking Microsoft Advertising Intelligence – and don’t take my word for it either, just check out this post on our keyword research tool – so we’re definitely serious about this space and will continue innovating.

Bing is a great product. At the recent Search Summit I organised in London, the Bing demo went down extremely well. People could see that there’s a change coming in the way we search and the way we do business.

One thing advertisers hate is waste. All they want to know is how they could have spent that money more wisely. So you only have to take a look at what the Atlas Institute have been doing with Engagement Mapping to see Microsoft Advertising is not all about search, but that we understand the whole user journey past all digital touch points.

A huge global audience on MSN plus messenger and hotmail plus the Microsoft Media Network plus in-game advertising on Xbox and elsewhere plus windows mobile plus innovations like Photosynth and Surface equals a mouth watering menu of technologies, insight and audience that advertisers can tap into in one place.

I love this industry because there is never a dull moment. Technology and innovation moves so fast planning too far ahead almost seem counterintuitive. Rest assured, in 5-10 years ALL advertising will be digital and when that happens Microsoft will be one of those companies that have helped the industry get there by providing the very best software plus services, actionable insight and dogged determination to provide advertisers with the very best value and experience possible.

I still feel a bit silly that in 1997 I told a PC World advisor that I didn’t think the internet would "catch on".

I’m glad I saw the light (eventually) and proud to be part of the most exciting period in its evolution to date!

Statsaholics Anonymous

1919324 — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:40:00 GMT

For years I’ve known about my addiction to site stats. Watching that trend line fluctuate, hoping for an upward curve. Now I’m willing to step forward and come clean. I’m not alone with this affliction; the world is covered with web statsaholics. Alisa Bowman, Jason Jaeger and Geoffrey Golden being some of the brave souls to admit their problem.

It made me think, is search the new crack cocaine? Could search’s success be largely thanks to the human race’s inherent need to see a graph with growing trend lines that continuously look better than they did the week before. Take the below week from one of my sites:

Check out the peaks on that! They’re growing and getting bigger. But wait, a week later and an influx of traffic from a social network caused a mega spike:

Suddenly those peaky peaks seem crappy and the mega peak is what I’m after in future. It’s a continual battle to up your own game. Don't even get me started on Ebay auctions.

Has anyone been able to go cold turkey?

Follow the IAB on Twitter

Badabing - it's on the up. #badabing

2306192 — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:14:00 GMT

So, it seems that BING is making an impression in the US – comScore reporting as much as a 3% increase in the two weeks since its launch.
It will be interesting to see if this growth is sustained, or rather whether the £100million investment rolls on and on to fuel the hype of the new ‘Decision Engine’. CEO Steve Balmer suggested that MS are prepared to offer up 5-10% of its operating incoming in search over the next 5 years (possibly a staggering £11billion!) and today at Microsoft’s European search summit MS has boldly vowed that they will be the best UK search engine – quite a statement eh!

I took 5 minutes to have a scout around BING; here are some of its nicest features that I’ve noticed.

• Search

Realted search, clear and logical – not too sales driven
Introduction of categories in the linear results - Apparently to combat the huge drop off of click through rates post position 5 that Google experiences, Bing seemingly offers a more enriched list.
Importantly – result quality seems good.

• Image search

Select by size, layout, colour, style and people – and from my test they all seem to work, makes Google’s colour selector look a bit naff!
Viewing options on how many images are on a page, nice smooth switch over of formats

• Related searches

They seem logical and unobtrusive
You can turn them off if they annoy you!

• Video

Roll over snippet functionality – gives you a small preview of the video in question (although this could reduce CTR on query based searches)
Again the plethora of search filters are welcoming and useful i.e best match or most recent

• Shopping

Bit of a fail – shoots you out to Ciao! Which just isn’t as nice? Still it’s a reputable partner, although the introduction of flashing banners, adsense and tags like ‘earn money for reviews’ removes some of BING’s simple allure.

• News

Limited, but hey it’s only in beta – expect more to come in this area

• Maps

Nice link through to Multi-map – still not Google maps is it!

Follow Microsoft’s search summit on twitter hash tag #badabing.

Five reasons why Bing has a long way to go

1713999 — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:25:00 GMT

If you work in digital media you'd have to have been living under a rock for the past few weeks to not have heard about Microsoft's re-branded search offering, Bing. So called because Microsoft believes it represents "the sound of found" (yes, quite), it seems everyone loves to talk about a potential Google killer and so it's no surprise to see that the PR machine has gone into over-drive once again with numerous features appearing in both the mainstream and specialist press.

Worst coverage of all came in the form of NMA's story last week, quoting research carried out by supposed news portal One News Page that stated that 55% of consumers plan to replace Google with Bing as their main search tool and (be warned, this one takes the biscuit) 90% would use the term "to bing it" as a term for searching the web. Shame on NMA on two counts. Firstly for printing such clearly ludicrous statistics without any kind of critique - seriously, 90% of people will say they are going to "bing it"? Even though that is 35% more than the number of people that plan to use it? Even worse is the fact that they have taken statistics from a site that is little more than a holding page - they claim to be a news aggregator but the fact they don't show up in comScore suggests they don't see significant enough traffic volumes to carry out the kind of survey needed to make these statements.

Before I start with the vitriol then there are a few things to note. Bing isn't all bad - it's certainly a step in the right direction and they represent more of a threat to Google than anyone else at present. However if they are to challenge their dominance in any way they have to address the following obstacles:

1. It's ugly. Don't get me wrong, Google is hardly an oil painting but that logo is horrendous. The images on the homepage are a good idea - the kind of thing that will have casual users setting it as their homepage just to see something new each day - but the execution is all wrong due to the central placement of the homepage. When a user actually searches for something the tabs and navigation all suddenly become left-aligned - it's a minor thing but it's jarring. The dead space around the images just seems like a wasted opportunity too. Why not expand the images so they fill the whole page, giving a much richer, colourful experience? Instead they have a homepage that feels dated already.

2. The timing of the launch was fumbled. I've already mentioned that there's been loads of press coverage but, for reasons best known to Microsoft, the full product won't be rolled out across Europe for six months yet, giving us a skinny version instead whilst the local teams catch-up. The result is that everyone goes to visit the site before the full functionality of the US version is here and write it off as nothing but a name change. The advertising dollars will now have to work twice as hard when Bing comes out of Beta in the UK and the competition will have had six months to catch up - if someone in Redmond is reading, feel free to give us a call if you need help with this!

3. Google are rapidly surpassing Microsoft even in their intended areas of strength. With Google Options and Squared announced literally weeks before Bing any thought leadership Microsoft would have had has already been diminished.

4. Bing isn't social. With access to Passport login data Microsoft have a clear advantage over Google in the social space - they know much better who you are and who your friends are. Why not use that information? Show me the restaurants my friends are more likely to click on. Let me ‘Bing' sites I like so my friends can see them.

5. They just don't get the audience. Microsoft claim to be targeting power searchers with Bing and it is understandable why - it's an audience containing 30% of searchers that are responsible for more than 50% of searches - but they just don't understand the audience. The images on the homepage are great for a casual audience but power users are likely to use a browser based search box. Microsoft's answer to this is to develop additional functionality in IE8 but who exactly are they kidding? We all know that they need to be targeting Firefox to win this audience.

So what do people think - does anyone have any thoughts on why Bing represents a serious challenger to Google's dominance?

Could Google make your work less efficient?

2545128 — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:50:00 GMT

With the apparent early success of Bing, could we be seeing the beginning of a rival to Google that, in terms of marketing activity, receives a significant share of media agency’s attention? MSN and Yahoo search have historically been slightly neglected by media agencies (and some clients), even though there is some volume to be had. The problem is resource – it requires an equal amount of time to manage each search engine – and the benefit simply doesn’t match the cost.

If search share grows on Bing, media agencies and clients will stand to gain more from managing the search advertising and will start to do it in the intricate manner currently only afforded to Google. This means we should start to see advertiser bidding competition heating up, which would be good news for Bill Gates.

A possible offshoot of a search duopoly would be that demand grows for tools that can manage activity across multiple engines, especially the mirroring of campaigns. This seems logical as the account structures, keywords, and creative are all pretty similar for the 3 engines, which means there are some big time savings to be made by using tools (some already in existence, and new ones) that deploy the same account to all 3.

However, I do wonder that if Google begins to feel threatened, they may try to employ the little-known ‘Functional Separation’ clause in their Adwords API terms and conditions.

Functional Separation. Any information collected from an input field used to collect AdWords API Campaign Management Data may be used only to manage and report on AdWords accounts. Similarly, any information or data used as AdWords API Campaign Management Data must have been collected from an input field used only to collect AdWords API Campaign Management Data. For example, the AdWords API Client may not offer a functionality that copies data from a non-AdWords account into an AdWords account or from an AdWords account to a non-AdWords account.

In a nutshell it means 3rd party tools that use the Google API to communicate with Google can’t produce a tool that allows clients and agencies to mirror their search campaigns across the three main engines. This would mean more demands on resource and hinder revenue growth on the other engines. Having spoken to some technology service providers, they allege that Google has started to enforce this clause, but only on a few rare occasions at the moment, and not having put this to Google it is unconfirmed. I don’t know if Doubleclick will be subjected to this restriction, but apparently the decision will need to come from the very top.

Bing.com From Behind The Bling

980070 — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 12:29:00 GMT

I’ve always been pretty agnostic on Digitales, but as this is my 300th post, I’m sure Steve and Rich at Media Week will allow me to talk Bing!

Ever since I joined Microsoft back in the summer of 2005, the advertisers and agencies I’ve talked to have loved adCenter and helped it grow in functionality through and open and honest dialogue. They’ve appreciated the diligence and availability our service teams and revelled in the great ROI they’ve gleaned from the platform.

The lingering question has always been around volume. What were we going to do to increase market share and take some of it away from Google?

Share has slipped somewhat since those days and now stands at around 4% in the UK. Not a nice place to be. And to be honest, I personally never had the answer to what was needed to draw people away from what they already know, other than it had to be a significant shift in how we display results, and add more value than what was currently out there.

Enter Bing.com!

Launched last week, the new search experience has been getting some great reviews.

Badged a “decision engine”, the idea is to take the heavy lifting and frustration out of searching the web - all that “back and forthing” trying to narrow down result choices and potentially wasting advertiser clicks at the same time – by categorising results into intuitive buckets which make it easier for users to find and more importantly take the action that lies behind their intent.

I won’t go into all the features here but check out the demo and videos for more insight.

Now we’ve had our knuckles rapped in the past for launching advertising products in the US and seeming to ignore the UK while our American cousins get their house in order. After all, we’re two countries divided – I mean united - by the same language right?

How hard can it be?

Well we’ve indicated we want a product that is locally relevant and has locally produced bells and whistles, and the folks in Redmond have listened. We have now opened a Search Technology Centre in London, and are working hard to put together a compelling offering with a truly British vibe.

What you see today on the UK version of Bing.com is not the final product – it is in Beta and it will get more exciting as our local engineers enrich the global experience with strong local flavour!

What does it mean for advertisers and marketers? Well Rich Sutcliffe asks some pertinent questions in his Media Week commentary this week and he’s right to ask them.

But I truly believe we’re at the proverbial crossroads here – there is so much more we can do to improve the speed and relevancy with which we connect advertisers with consumers.

Software is the answer and we need to innovate and adapt business models and practices in order to capitalize on what is starting to become a brave new world.

Discover Bing and let me know what you think....