How to Get the Most out of Bing's New Competitive Bid Opportunity Tool
Advertisers seeking a competitive edge on how to get their ads to show, now have access to Bing Ads’ Competitive Bid Opportunity, an advanced tool within their New Opportunities Tab.
In August 2014, the New Opportunities Tab was introduced to US advertiser to help retailers optimize their best ad position. The following October, the feature was open to all markets.
Last month, Bing announced retailers can use the Competitive Bid Opportunity tool to help identify the number of keywords for which their ads could potentially show more often in relation to other advertisers. Identified by their website URLs, retailers have access to specific bid suggestions with the ability to beat out other competitive retailers vying for the same traffic.
“The primary benefit of the Competitive Bid Opportunity tool is – it will tell you how to show your ad more often than your competitors (implying that you and your competitors are bidding on the same keywords),” *Frances Donegan-Ryan, Bing Ads Global Community Manager said.
The Competitive Bid Opportunity feature identifies which advertisers retailers can optimize against by pulling impression share data from the auction insights report. Therefore, in order to assess how effective your optimization efforts are, retailers should refer to their impression share growth.
How to use Bing’s Competitive Bid tool:
1) Opportunities
Within Bing Ads, click on “Opportunities” and check “Competitive Bid Opportunity” if it is available. If so, click “View Opportunities” to get more details.
In the summary table at the top of the page, advertisers can see the overall information for one of their leading competitors – identified by domain URL. In the detail table, you can see keyword opportunities, current and suggested bid and estimated impression share / spend increase. You’ll also have the option to view up to 10 other competitors by clicking on the other URLs.
2) Keywords
Choose keywords to boost your bid on any or all of the suggested keywords. In the detail table, you can sort your keywords by various criteria, select the keywords you want to raise the bids for and update your campaign instantly by clicking “Apply”.
How can Bing’s Competitive Bid Opportunity help retailers?
“There isn’t a guarantee that you will win the auction,” Donegan-Ryan said.
What the feature can do is show marketers the details of their share voice when a potential customer searches for a product. It informs marketers of their ad shows for that week in comparison to their competitor’s ad for the same keyword(s) for that product in the same time period.
“For example, if I’m betting $1 on red shoes – it will show me that 55 percent of the time when someone searches ‘red shoes’, my ad shows. The other 45 percent of the time – my competitors ad shows. What the tool will show me is, if I raise my bid by the suggested amount ( 50 cents) and increase my bid to a $1. 50, then I can see how my share of voice will increase in comparison to my competitors,” Donegan-Ryan said.
It won’t guarantee how many times your ad will show or if you will win the auction every time but it does give retailers an advantage on their target competitors to see how they can adjust their bids to win the auction.
Bing Ads will only offer the competitive bid opportunity when their data has determined that there is an opportunity to attract more eligible impressions than the competing ad. If there is an unreasonable change required to achieve the competitive bid, then the competitive bid opportunity will not be shown in the opportunities at that time.
According to Donegan-Ryan, Bing’s Competitive Opportunity tool is “super powerful” and considered all things are equal between two competitors including great ad copy, quality landing pages, strong keywords and site links this tool can be the deciding factor on winning the consumer.
“This is the tool that sets you apart. It does take a little bit more time and attention to detail but its going to be the differentiating factor of your company winning versus your competitors and getting that customer,” Donegan-Ryan said.
*Frances Donegan-Ryan is involved in all aspects of “finding you online” including SEO, SEM, PPC, social media, content development, UX/UI and website design. She’s worked in small teams in big companies and tiny teams in small companies, always aiming to help get the right messages to the right customers at the right time. You’ll find her at paid search conferences and Bing Ads Connect events around the country.
Click here for more on Bing Ads’ Competitive Bid Opportunity.
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