There are many things a business should consider before deciding whether to advertise on google or Bing. While most people would immediately say that google is better simply from the popularity it has, there are a multitude of things one should consider before making a decision.
- Cost
- Conversion Rate
- Demographics
- Ad Restrictions
The first, and possibly the biggest decider, is cost. How much it will cost to run your ads on a website might not outweigh how many customers click on it and thus, it might not be worth spending the extra money. Likewise, even if the advertisement gets a lot of clicks, the cost of the advertisement might not outweigh the amount of people who buy your product. This is what we call the Conversion Rating. A business’s conversion rating is determined by how many people click on your ad and end up buying your product, signing up for your newsletters, or subscribing to your content. While google costs more to advertise on, they also have a higher conversion rating of almost 1%. Now, 1% doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you put it into a different perspective; the difference between Bing’s conversion rating, 2.94%, and Google’s conversion rating, 3.75%, it is quite a large difference.
While cost is important, Demographic is also something to consider. Demographic may seem like an odd thing to consider but depending on who your target audience is, this could be the deciding factor. According to many studies done in 2019, Bing users are generally forty-five years of age and older while google users are younger. If your target audience is people in their mid-fifties, being might be a better choice for you. However, if you’re looking to target a younger demographic, or maybe all ages, you might be better off advertising on google.
Of course, it only makes sense that a company’s advertising decision would be based on whether or not their ad is within the guidelines of the platform. Google has a much stricter list of things that cannot be advertised than Bing does. Google’s list includes; counterfeit goods, data collection and use, adult content, alcohol, political content, healthcare and medicine, gambling and games, and inappropriate content such as bullying, intimidation, racial discrimination, self-harm, and more. This is, of course, a condensed list of eight out of twenty-three prohibited advertisements each with their own set of rules. Bing prohibits ads containing political and religious content, weapons of any kind, dating, sensitive advertising, hate speech, and more. Bing’s list has ten taboo topics, compared to Google’s twenty-three it would seem that Bing has much more lenient rules and therefore, is better in this respect.
In the end there is no right or wrong answer, simply, which is more beneficial for a company. If a company is targeting an older audience and are hoping to have less restrictions, then Bing would be the best choice. Likewise, if a company is looking to target a younger audience and have a higher conversion rate, google would be the right choice. It all comes down to what your company values the most.
