Ads vs Google AdWords: A Comparison Guide for Beginners

Using online ads to promote your business is a great way to boost traffic to your website. Plus, it can draw more foot traffic to your brick-and-mortar if you have one.

Now, it’s important to note that there are various platforms you can use for displaying your ads. For example, you can buy ads on Twitter, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, and Google, to name a few.

But for this article, we’re going to review Bing Ads vs Google Adwords.

If you’re battling between the two and want to know which one to focus your efforts on, then continue reading.

Let’s take a closer look!

Which Has Less Competition and Cheaper CPC’s?

As a business, you want to get the best results for the advertising you invest in. So it makes sense that you choose the platform that’ll yield less competition and lower-priced cost-per-clicks.

In this case, Bing Ads is better than Adwords. However, most people go right to Google because it’s more popular. And maybe that’s why there’s less competition on Bing.

Choosing to post your ads on here means you’ll still get great results but at a lower price. Compared to Google Adwords, you can get better ad placements because of the lower competition.

What About the Conversion Rate & CPL?

Getting a lot of clicks and traffic from your online ads doesn’t mean your sales will automatically increase. This is why it’s imperative that you have quality leads coming in.

One way to measure this is by looking at the conversion rates your ads are getting. The cost-per-lead (CPL) is what will determine the quality of the traffic.

Tracking your conversion rate in both systems to compare is critical. It is recommended to shift budget to the better performing PPC platform, whether it’s Google Adwords or Bing Ads.

Which Ad Platform is Best for My Demographics?

Well, that all comes down to what demographic group you’re targeting in your ads. For instance, if you’re going for the older age groups, then Bing Ads are the way to go. They have roughly 40% user base between 35 and 54 years old. And about 43% are married.

And you’ll be happy to learn that the male to female ratio is 50-50.

However, if you’re targeting folks under 35, then Google Adwords may be better, but testing will determine this overall.

Bing Ads vs Google Adwords: Description Text

Back in the day, Google only gave you 35 characters for writing ad copy. Needless to say, that’s not really enough to say what you need to say to your audience.

Then Bing came along and offered its advertisers 71 character spaces for ads. Of course, Google wasn’t going to go down without a fight. Today, Google Adwords gives you 80 characters.

That’s plenty of space to be creative in your ad content, so Google takes the cake here, but Bing typically updates soon after Google does.

And Which Has the Best Keyword Tools?

When it comes to researching keywords, using broad match, negative keyword targeting, and so on, it’s a tie. Both ad platforms have keyword tools that are pretty good.

Again, the only difference between the two is that the traffic volumes for Bing are much lower than Google’s. Also, Bing allows the option to target only search partners in a campaign. More data can also be pulled in Bing Ads for impressions for keywords that were not clicked.

Which Gives You the Best Reach?

There’s no doubt about it – Google is the #1 search engine for the English-speaking world. So it’s no surprise that it would give the greater reach for your PPC ads. This is why Google has a larger search volume than Bing.

However, you want to keep a close eye on Bing because its engine is growing profusely. About 34% of desktop users are searching on Bing. And users perform roughly 5.5 billion searches on Bing each month. There are about 136 million unique searchers that use the Bing Network.

Then it’s important to note that Bing Ads reaches 63 million searchers that Google Adwords doesn’t reach. The household income of many Bing users is over $100K, which can mean a higher potential for them to convert into customers.

With these numbers, it’s key to keep your ear to the ground about the growing potential of Bing Ads.

Which Has Better Transparency in Traffic Sources?

Bing is the winner here since it’s fully transparent about sharing details about search partners. This gives the advertiser better understanding of where traffic derives from.

You get detailed reports on the performance of your campaigns, including the metrics, impressions to conversions and so on.

Of course, the search engine giant, Google, has a similar platform that gives you a host of information about your Adwords campaigns. Google Analytics is the tool, which you can use to track all of your online campaigns, including email marketing, social media marketing, and content marketing efforts.

Everything ties together, so it’s great to have this bird’s eye view of all your campaigns in one place.

Targeting Specific Devices, Which is Better?

Some businesses want to reach a specific group of people that use a particular device. For instance, you may sell apps and want to target mobile users, preferably with an Android OS.

Both have the option to target by device, so test on both systems!

Putting Together a Professional PPC Ad Campaign

Organic search marketing is a key way to gain traffic to your business, but you don’t want to overlook the power of PPC ads. The ever-growing market gives businesses a grand opportunity to quickly gain visibility and traffic.

If you’re trying to improve your conversions and revenue, then you need to put together a professional campaign. And it doesn’t matter which you pick between Bing Ads vs Google Adwords, both are great platforms.

In some cases, businesses are using both at the same time. If you’re not sure which ad networks you should use, we can help!

We offer complete PPC management services for various platforms. Contact us today to see how we can help your business grow!