Study: Search Marketers Should Get in on the Yahoo-Bing Action Before It’s too Late

Google AdWords is, to many, a synonym for “paid search.” But a report from AdGooroo reminds marketers that the Yahoo-Bing search network deserves a place in their strategies, too.

While “the other search engine” doesn’t get the click-through rates and traffic that Google AdWords does, it retains some notable advantages, which may soon fade.

The landscape
According to comScore’s numbers for February, Google claims 67.5 percent of all U.S. search queries, while Microsoft (i.e., Bing) has 16.7 percent and Yahoo has 11.6 percent. Combined, Bing and Yahoo, which formed a search alliance in October 2009, have 28.3 percent of the U.S. search market.

With nearly 3 in 10 searches being handled by Yahoo-Bing, paid-search advertisers should be asking themselves some questions to find out whether the No. 2 search property is worth their while.

AdGooroo’s report, “Yahoo! Bing PPC Performance Metrics: What Search Marketers Need to Know About ‘The Other Search Engine’,” reveals hard numbers to help marketers gauge how much attention they should be giving Yahoo-Bing. It examines metrics across six key verticals: 1) shopping and classified; 2) financial services; 3) travel; 4) education; 5) computer and Internet; and 6) business.

Ad impressions
According to AdGooroo, AdWords delivered more impressions in five of the six categories. Yahoo-Bing claimed financial services, while yielding the other categories to Google. “We speculate that this phenomenon may be due to the popularity of the financial reportage on the Yahoo! and MSN portals, which have each accumulated a loyal following of readers and, naturally, point their readers’ searches to the Yahoo! Bing engine rather than to Google,” writes Gregg Hamilton, the author of the study.

The report points out that the gap between AdWords and Yahoo-Bing is noticeably pronounced in the shopping and classified category, where AdWords delivers 60 percent more paid-ad impressions than Yahoo-Bing.

Click-through rates (CTRs)
CTRs weren’t so kind to Yahoo-Bing, which trailed in all six categories. AdGooroo notes that on average, CTRs on AdWords were 2.4-5.2 times higher than those on Yahoo-Bing.

Yahoo-Bing has to shoulder at least some of the blame here, since search engines are the ones that decide which ads to display on search engine results pages (SERPs). This makes it “reasonable to conclude that AdWords is making smarter choices and displaying a more compelling set of PPC ads on average in response to specific search queries, i.e., keywords,” Hamilton writes.

The report notes that though AdWords exhibits overall superiority when it comes to CTRs, there are small samples of advertisers that are on both search engines and get better CTRs on Yahoo-Bing.

Cost per click (CPC)
With better more traffic and better CTRs, it’s no surprise that AdWords also has higher CPCs across all six verticals. AdGooroo notes that 76-90 percent of advertisers experienced lower CPCs on Yahoo-Bing than on AdWords.

Cost per thousand impressions (CPM)
Again, it’s no surprise that with higher CPCs and CTRs, AdWords has higher CPMs across all six verticals, and it’s not even close.

“In short, pure brand impressions on AdWords’ SERPs are considerably more expensive than on Yahoo! Bing,” Hamilton writes. “As such, advertisers who fail to attract Yahoo! Bing clickthroughs are still benefiting from much cheaper first SERP ad exposures.”

Competition
AdWords also leads Yahoo-Bing in all six verticals when it comes to the number of advertisers earning first SERP exposure