In a bid to bring their service in line with Google AdWords, Bing Ads is about to get a massive overhaul. The service hopes that by improving its tablet and mobile targeting options it will be more appealing to AdWords advertisers and easier for people who want to run campaigns on both services. The overhaul will be rolled out gradually over the next few months and will see advertisers be able to target specific devices, such as desktops, tablets or smartphones, in a similar fashion to how AdWords allows advertisers to target their ads. When Bing Ads first started to offer compatibility with the enhanced campaigns feature of AdWords, customers were rather confused by the extra complexity that this advertising option created. To make things simpler for advertisers, Bing Ads is working to bring the system in line with AdWords. The hope is that by offering a more familiar set of options, the service will be less confusing and advertisers will find it easier to operate on both platforms. Bing has told advertisers that the rollout will occur in several stages, with the first phase taking place in September 2014. There will be some preparation work required for advertisers that are already taking advantage of explicit mobile device targeting. The rollout will complete in 2015. The existing device targeting feature will be removed as a part of the rollout, and a new data modifier will be used instead. The bid modifiers will work for smartphones and for tablets. Smartphones will have a -100% to 300% modifier, while tablets will have the option for a -20% to +100% modifier. This means that advertisers will not be able to completely opt out of targeting users of tablet devices, but they can opt out of mobile targeting. Lisa Reahsler, the founder of Big Click Co said that prior to this change advertisers had the chance to take advantage of a lot of flexibility when targeting devices using the Bing advertising platform. Trends show that mobile devices are becoming increasingly commonplace but there are still some challenges when it comes to mobile campaigns, such as the way that mobile does not tend to convert quite as well as desktop. Raehsler is concerned that the changes may cause concerns for advertisers. It will be interesting to see how the rollout is received and whether there are any initial teething problems.
05th June 2014
