We have a number of smaller clients taking advantage of the lower traffic numbers on Yahoo! and Bing to run profitable PPC campaigns where they couldn’t show a profit on Google due to crazy competition running up CPCs.

Unfortunately, when Yahoo! completes the transition on the paid search side, the combined market share will be 20-30%. I have no doubt this will result in a lot more competition on Bing/Yahoo! as larger advertisers begin spending more time and money targeting the estimated 62% larger search volume and that will consequently drive up CPCs. Hopefully things won’t get too crazy, but if there was ever a time to optimize your Bing campaign, it’s now.

The interesting thing is I’d bet a good chunk of people don’t even know what incontinence is…hell, I didn’t know until I saw a pharmaceutical commercial a few months ago and I just started to wonder until eventually it was all I was thinking about and I just had to know…so I looked it up.

So my question is…was this an accident, or is someone trying to subtly insult me? Pretty funny regardless.

By the way, I’ve removed the support agent’s info as I don’t want him/her catching heat should his/her higher ups come across this post; he/she was extremely helpful after all.

Highlight added for emphasis.

Dear John ,

I called to follow up on your service request regarding your Microsoft adCenter account with Bing. I’m happy to tell you that your account is now active and running. The editorial team overturned the appeal for your landing page containing pharmaceutical. I’m very sorry for the incontinence this may have caused you. I understand how it can be frustrating.

We value each of our customers and would like to provide you with a positive experience.  You may receive a survey asking you to rate our performance. Please take the time to provide your feedback as your opinion is very important to us.

If the issue you called about was not resolved or if you feel we did not provide an excellent level of service, please call us immediately and we will gladly answer your concerns.  I have documented this e-mail under service request #[request number removed].

We want to thank you for allowing us to help build your business by advertising with Microsoft adCenter.

Sincerely,

[name removed] [department removed]

Bing iPhone App

For you iPhone junkies, there’s an updated iPhone app available.

Mobile Social Search Results

Bing Mobile has a few social media powered enhancements. Bing claims that  over 40% of ambiguous search queries are better answered by social networks than by traditional search algorithms. In an effort to improve it’s results, Bing is including relevant results from your social network along with it’s traditional results. “So if you search for a movie, you’ll see movie showtimes first, then anything your friends may have said about it next.

Barcode Scanning

Want to do some comparison shopping? Next time you’re in a brick and mortar store, scan a product barcode or album cover art and Bing will supply comparison shopping information for that item. Sounds great, but I haven’t been able to test this yet to see how effective it is.

Bing has quite a few other enhancements, which you can read about at Discover Bing.

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