Competitive Bid Opportunities Arrive On Bing To Help Advertisers Analyze Themselves Against Rivals

Over the past 6 months Bing has helped advertisers spend more effectively, not necessarily by offering more ad options or units, but by adding better competitive tools. Last summer Bing launched Auction Insights in the U.S. with a global launch last week. Today Bing has simplified the functionality with new “Competitive Bid Opportunities”.
Advertisers will now be able to see exactly which keywords have opportunities with a direct comparison to other advertisers on a keyword level. Previous functionality was sweeping and not overly detailed, but the new features will allow for a granular comparison between a company and their competition. With this new feature advertisers will be able to choose a competing URL and see how much impression share they have in comparison, along with recommended changes in spend for each term. Best yet? If an advertiser sees an opportunity they’d like to take, they can quickly “apply” the changes directly to their account.

Here’s how it works. Advertisers must click on the opportunities tab from the main navigation. They must then look to see if “Competitive Bid Opportunity” is available, if so, click on “View Opportunities”. Once inside, advertisers will see the main information from leading competitors at the top with the ability to select each website for a quick comparison. The impression shares vs competitors will then be displayed with a recommended change in spend. If any keywords make sense, the advertiser can select them and click the “apply” tab to accept the recommendations.

While this seems like a fully automated system a few warnings should be noted. Firstly, just because a competitor shows up for a set keyword, it doesn’t mean that they are bidding on the same exact keyword as an advertiser. The numbers shown are the competition’s share in that specific keyword auction. Different matching options can skew these details, so be don’t think that advertisers will know the full facts on their competitor’s account. Also, the data used is past data, not current bidding information. So this should be used as a competitive guide, not a real-time cheat sheet. Lastly, not all advertisers will have the opportunity to access this, specific criteria will need to be met in order to have this functionality fired.