Mention Bing in a marketing meeting and someone will make the joke.
Fine. While they're laughing, the same buyer intent that costs a fortune on Google is clearing at lower prices in an auction most of their competitors never entered.
Quieter auctions, same intent
Google Ads is the most contested advertising marketplace there is. Every competitor you have is in it, bidding on the same queries, and the auction prices accordingly.
Microsoft Ads serves the same kind of intent - people typing what they want into a search box - with far fewer advertisers competing for it. Less competition, cheaper wins. It's not more complicated than that.
The volume is smaller than Google's, obviously. But smaller isn't the same as small, and it's concentrated somewhere interesting.
Your B2B buyers are on Edge whether they chose it or not
Corporate desktops default to Edge, and Edge defaults to Bing. A large share of workplace machines never change either setting.
Which means a meaningful chunk of professional, at-their-desk, during-work-hours searching happens on Microsoft's network - the exact searching B2B advertisers pay premiums to reach on Google. Your buyers didn't pick Bing. Their IT department did. The intent is real either way.
Then there's the feature Google can't answer: LinkedIn profile targeting. Microsoft owns LinkedIn, so in search campaigns you can adjust bids by industry, company, and job function. Bid up when the searcher works in your target industry or holds the right function, ease off when they don't.
Profile-level bidding, inside search, on live intent. Nothing else in paid search does this, and hardly anyone uses it.
Judge it on one number
Here's the discipline, because Bing's cheap CPCs are their own trap.
Don't judge Microsoft Ads on CPC - a cheap click is not an achievement, on any platform. Judge it on cost per qualified lead, and give it one job: land below your Google number.
That's the whole business case. Same intent, same qualification standard, lower cost per qualified outcome. If it clears that bar - and in our experience it usually does - it earns its place. If it doesn't, no amount of "but the CPCs" should save it.
Two practical notes from running this across accounts:
- Import from Google, then actually manage it. Your proven Google structure is the starting point, which keeps setup cheap. But the auction behaves differently - bids, negatives, and settings need their own attention. Set-and-forget imports are why most people think Bing "doesn't work".
- Keep expectations proportionate. This is an efficiency channel, not a growth engine. It won't double your leads. It'll deliver a tranche of them cheaper than Google does, for modest ongoing effort.
The barrier is a rounding error
Total setup cost: an account, an import, and a few hours of tuning. We've already written up the practical side of account access - roles, invites, linking, the settings that bite.
So the joke's a bit stale. Cheaper auctions, buyers parked on Edge by their IT departments, and bid control by job title in search.
Your competitors' scepticism is the discount. Take it while it lasts.
