A new ad campaign from Bing seems aimed at attracting a younger, more active audience, labeling the Microsoft-owned search portal as the engine for “#Doing.” Search marketers might want to see whether the initiative brings more users to Bing … or if it garners attention without shifting the market as the company’s earlier Facebook ads did.
The campaign features results for a series of searches around Kevin Pearce, a former U.S. snowboarding Olympian who suffered a brain injury in 2009. Through search results, Bing highlights Pearce’s road to recovery in the spot. According to Bing, the campaign builds off its previous spots as “the Decision engine,” essentially telling users that Bing will provide the best results to make a decision and ultimately turn to “doing” what they searched for.
Marketers may like how this “search to act” campaign encourages online shoppers move from search to purchase, and it’s not the first time Bing has encouraged search-based transactions. The company has worked aggressively to make additions to its SERPs that allow people to act directly from that page. Rather than having to click through to a website, placing calls to action on SERPs allow users to book flights, buy movie tickets and make dinner reservations faster.
Bing continues its push to cut into Google’s massive lead in the search market, highlighting its ability to make certain processes faster may help lure some users.
Bing campaigns might also benefit from the fact that some users are disappointed with new Google adjustments, namely the integration of social data into Search, plus Your World. Brafton don’t like the idea of social data influencing their search result. Brafton recently reported that 45 percent of respondents to an AYTM Market Research survey said they did not don’t like the idea of social data influencing their search results.
