Paid Search Strategy: Google vs. Microsoft
They may appear similar, but here’s what to know when testing these distinct channels.
We all know that Google commands the lion’s share of searches and media investment today, but that doesn’t mean the same tactics should apply to your Microsoft Ads strategies. You can find strong and differentiated performance on both platforms with the right best practices.
Paid search within Google Ads, driven by a strong strategy and relevant user experience, is often a top driver of campaign traffic and website engagement for many space150 media clients. We’ve found success in extending this strategy to reach the highest intent searchers through Microsoft Ads which covers Bing and placement on Yahoo, AOL, and other smaller search engines. Though the Google and Microsoft ad platforms appear similar and there is a super easy import functionality to import your Google Ads campaigns in Microsoft Ads, the space150 media teams have uncovered the following differences to be aware of as you test into this channel.
Match Type
Situation: Phrase match in Microsoft Ads is much like a broad match in Google Ads due to the 2021 inclusion of “behavior of Broad Match Modifier”.
Recommendation: Launch on Microsoft with exact match keywords if you already have an optimized keyword list from Google. If you don’t, closely monitor your “search terms” report, adding exclusions for non-relevant terms or building up your exact match keyword list for the most relevant terms.
Smart Bidding & Bid Adjustments
Situation: Google Ads has trained agencies that bid adjustments for geography, demographics, audiences, and more are a waste of time for Smart Bidding campaigns, as the machine learning thrives on more data. Conversely, Microsoft Ads support teams still recommend them, even though their machine learning is reported to be “similar to Google”.
Recommendation: If you’ve abandoned bid adjustments for your conversion campaigns for Google, still take some time to observe performance differences between these options and adjust your bids accordingly in Microsoft Ads.
Competition
Situation: Anyone who has bid on competitor keywords in Google Ads knows how harshly you are penalized with a low quality score and high costs, so much so you’ve probably abandoned the tactic.
For Microsoft Ads, perhaps it’s a function of the aforementioned match-type nuances, but we’ve observed increased competition in Microsoft Ads on our (clients’) own brand terms. We’ve even seen the same competitor show up 2x with different landing pages in our branded SERP!
Recommendation: We recommend keeping a close eye, especially on your brand search campaigns in the “competition” report for competitors that may be driving up the cost of your keywords! If you find yourself in this situation, advanced optimization (more bid adjustments, audience refinements, and keyword-level optimization) may be your best bet in combating high costs and competition in the SERP.
Microsoft Ads can be a strong performing addition to your paid search strategy, especially with some audiences! Don’t fall into the trap of treating it exactly like Google Ads.
—Sarah Zielie, VP of Media
