Bing – Can Microsoft Deliver?

With the launch of Microsoft’s new ‘decision engine’ Bing, everyone is talking about the intelligent way in which it delivers results by interpreting what you’re searching for as well as the potential impact this will have on Google’s market share.

However, as cute as this is – the key question from a marketing perspective is how is Microsoft is planning to generate traffic volume.

• The current adCenter platform for advertisers is a challenge.
• The volumes are not available and the interface itself a chore to use!
• How can you justify running on any advertising which is clearly costing you more to facilitate than the return achievable.

Due to some of these points, Microsoft Adcenter is often left off the media schedule. The benefits for pushing advertisers onto AdCenter rather than running the budget on Google is often overshadowed by the time and effort it takes to use the archaic functionality.

Bing has a great concept – ‘Help me decide what I am looking for’ and the hype around it so far is promising. However without the volumes it still remains dead in the water. Historically, Microsoft has paid people to use their search engine and this hasn’t worked before. Does it simply come back to the fact that Google’s search results are still more relevant?

Microsoft will have to do a lot more to have Google quaking in their boots – Bing or otherwise…