Back in January, Bing Ads announced a strengthened partnership with Verizon Media in an effort to help improve how consumers find products and services across multiple platforms.
Now, ads on both Yahoo and AOL (Verizon Media properties) are exclusively served by Bing Ads.
What does that mean for retailers?
While the article specifically mentioned Search, Shopping ads were also incorporated into the Yahoo and AOL search pages which could potentially lead to more impressions and more clicks on product ads.
With two additional avenues for added traffic to storefronts, merchants could expect to see an uptick in sales as well.
Bing Ads stated that:
“We estimate that our enhanced partnership could result in an increase in clicks across the Bing Ads marketplace for customers targeting the United States of up to 10-15%.”
Below you can see how Shopping ads are now served on Yahoo:
And then there are only minor differences when searching on AOL:
One of the major differences between Bing itself and Yahoo/AOL is how their Shopping search tab function. Bing provides a more traditional, comparison engine with its dedicated Shopping tab:
Yahoo’s Shopping tab only shows text-based ads while AOL’s Shopping link directs searchers directly to eBay. On both Yahoo and AOL, Shopping is found under the More tab:
It will be interesting to see if Bing is able to incorporate the comparison shopping engine into these tabs in the future.
What about segmented reporting?
In the Bing Ads UI, you can use Dimensions to find performance stat breakdowns based on channel, although Bing and Yahoo are combined as one report:
This can be helpful in determining the added value of ads appearing on the two new search networks under the Bing Ads helm of exclusivity in ad delivery.
The Bottom Line
Its definitely a great time to start advertising using Bing Shopping campaigns if you aren’t already, while those who are already running Shopping campaigns using Bing may have seen an uptick in views and clicks on their ads.
Our team is continuing to analyze the impact of the partnership that has added Yahoo and AOL to the Bing Ads network.
The generally lower cost of Shopping ads themselves play very well to these new channels as only a few dollars in ad spend can bring in a substantial volume of new sales.