Series week rolls on as Cassie explores her Bing predictions for 2015. Also make sure to check out Sarah’s post on projected RLSA expansion in 2015 and Jeff’s prediction of the year of bid and budget automation.
The Yahoo Bing Network has big plans on the horizon for 2015 that could potentially change the way we advertise pay-per-click ads and budgets for Bing Ads. The Yahoo Bing Network has been thought of by some as Google’s “little brother.” The fact of the matter is that little brothers eventually grow up! I’m not predicting the Yahoo Bing Network will be staring eye-to-eye with Google for 2015, however, with some major changes on the horizon, I do predict a decent growth spurt for the Yahoo Bing Network. Below are 4 areas that I predict having a major impact on Bing Ads pay-per-click and digital budgets for 2015.
Tracking
In October 2014, Bing announced the release of Universal Event Tracking (UET). UET will allow advertisers to track goals, engagement, cross-device information, attribution and bounce rates. This new tracking system will replace the Bing Ads Campaign Analytics and allow a more robust tracking solution for Bing Ads advertisers.
If you haven’t already installed the new Bing UET you may want to put that on your new years resolution to-do list because Bing Ads tracking codes created before July 2013, will no longer be supported after April 2015. Don’t worry, PPC Hero has your back. Kevin Klein wrote a post about the launch of UET and how to install. The new Bing UET code is supported by many tag management providers including Google Tag Manager and Adobe Tag manager, which should hopefully make it simple to install for many advertisers.
I predict the Bing Ads new UET being the spark that lights a fire of opportunities for Bing Advertisers including mobile expansion and remarketing which I will elaborate on more below.
Remarketing
With the release of UET, advertisers will soon have the ability to add Bing Ads remarketing to their PPC tool belt.
“UET lays the groundwork necessary for audience based remarketing scenarios (coming soon!) such as bid boosting by providing the ability to define custom audience segments and specifically target them.” Bing Ads
This news comes at a great time when Google has been tightening the noose on editorial reviews for remarketing. On average, 95% of users do not convert from their first visit. Having a chance to try and convert that money into a sale or lead via remarketing can be extremely successful in increasing conversion rates and conversions. Remarketing on Google has proven to be extremely successful for many advertisers with CPAs and conversion rates comparable to search and brand campaign performance.
While I predict this will be a great opportunity to add to your PPC arsenal, I’m a little skeptical as to how well it will perform since the Yahoo Bing Content Network does not hold the same weight as the Google Display network. Now if Remarketing for search (RLSA) becomes available, that could potentially become a game changer for PPC advertisers. Only time will tell but it’s probably best to place the new Bing UET tags ASAP so you are ready to test it out as soon as remarketing becomes available for Bing Ads.
Mobile
Everyone’s favorite topic: THE YEAR OF MOBILE 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015… As with years past, I predict there will continue to be a focus on mobile. The Gartner report estimates $42 billion in mobile advertising spend by 2017. Yahoo Bing in Q3 2014 saw click volume from smart phones more than double year-over-year.
The Yahoo Bing Network recognizes this growth and will be offering improvements to mobile including:
- Mobile targeting improvements – zip code, radius and geo location targeting
- New App Extensions planned to launch in Q1 2015
- Mobile Product Ads
- Universal Event Tracking – Cross-Device tracking
With Bing Ads jumping on the enhanced campaign bandwagon, UET tracking and new mobile features are a clear sign that creating a mobile strategy for Yahoo Bing for 2015 will be imperative.
Search Market Share On the Rise
In November, Mozilla made a huge announcement that shook the search community by announcing that Mozilla’s FireFox 34 will be using Yahoo as the new default search experience in the U.S. instead of Google for the next 5 years. According to StatCounter, within 2 weeks, Yahoo search share increased from 9.6% to 29.4% as users upgraded from FireFox 33 to 34.
FireFox 34 is still in the early stages so volume increases are minimal, but as users continue to upgrade, I predict at least a 2-5% increase in US search impression share gain made by the Yahoo Bing Network for 2015. ComScore recent US Search Market Share reported 67% (Google), 19.5 % (Bing), 10.3% (Yahoo).
Closing Thoughts
As we can see Yahoo Bing will be making some pretty big moves in 2015 that could impact pay-per-click programs everywhere. What are your predictions for Yahoo Bing in 2015?
