Microsoft kicks off huge Bing ad push
Microsoft faces several tough problems in trying to market Bing, its revamped search engine.
The first issue, is of course, that Google has become essentially synonymous with search.
"Google is so much a part of everyday culture," said Danielle Tiedt, general manager for marketing in Microsoft's online unit. "It is the verb. If you talk about search you talk about Google."
The second issue, also a thorny one, is that people tend to think they are pretty happy with search. When they have problems, they tend not to blame their search engine or look for alternatives, Tiedt said.
"We know there is this latent dissatisfaction in the search market," Tiedt said. "When people don't get right search result they thing it's their fault."
Microsoft's huge TV ad campaign, which kicks off on Wednesday, aims to put a name to the problem and pitch Bing as the answer.
"A big part of the campaign is 'It's not just you'," Tiedt said. The ads will run first on CBS' "CSI: New York" and Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance." (Disclosure: CNET News is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.)
Bing started to be publicly available on Monday, but officially launches Wednesday, following months of development and internal testing. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed off the company's effort last week at the D: All Things Digital event in Carlsbad, Calif.
Microsoft isn't saying just how much it is spending on the ad campaign, though advertising trade magazines have estimated it at between $80 million and $100 million.
"Obviously, we are spending a significant amount of money," Tiedt said. "We're trying to get entered into the conversation of search. We are spending enough money that people (will) have heard of us."
The initial video spot will run for about two weeks, followed by more lighthearted ads that try to illustrate the challenges of search today. The next wave of ads, Tiedt said, are dramatizations of what it would be like if people had to talk to their partners or friends the way they do to a search engine. They get back responses that have the same words as their question, but nothing at all to do with what they asked.
Next month, Microsoft will start doing more product-specific TV ads that look at specific areas such as travel search.
An online ad push also starts Wednesday, with Bing ads on the front of MSN.com. The ads will move throughout the Web and Microsoft is also doing some things on Facebook and Twitter, including a photo contest where the community will get to choose a winning photo to become the backdrop for Bing itself on a particular day.
The TV spots are being done by JWT, while Microsoft's Razorfish unit created the online ads.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
Ok i put the word drinking in there, but that's the nature of the brain...it completes sentences in a proper way. Also i read about some binge drinking in the news today, so i guess it stuck with me..
and another thing, cashback is really nice and you would be naiive is you think otherwise....its only a fool who wouldn't want cashback when they buy something: if 2 shops were selling the same item, 1 offers it at full price and the other gives you 5% or 10% cashback, which would you shop?.....I would go with the cashback....however it seems you would go to the one with full price....anyways, thats your loss.
M$ is trying to shed the reputation they have harvested over the years by rebranding everything they offer. Fista is going to be w7, live search is going to be bing ... hey, it's easier than changing your spots!
I use both Win7 and Vista and the experience I get from Win7 is on a different level. yes, they're build on roughly the same core, but its the difference between a stock car and one that is totally supped up.
however, back to the search thing, use whatever works for you, Bing works pretty well for me so I'll use what works well for me.
And you'll agree with me that "result that wow people" is the one that is most relevant, reasonable, well-organized rather than the one with the HIGHEST NUMBER OF PAGES.
Number of Pages is not equal to Relevance NOR is it to Reasonableness NOR is to ORGANIZATION. When last do you browse to, say, Page 6 (I mean Gooooo[o:6]...gle) of your search result! Be honest. If you are like me, I normally change my search criteria, immediately after the 3rd or 4th Page. I hardly go further than that. ONLY God knows what the next 1 billion pages would contain.... I would find out, anyway.
Won't it be better to have such reasonable results accummulated in the first three (3) to four (4) pages of the result pages.
That is why we need BING. You can check out its Picture, Video, and Travel search; please be honest with what you see after all and FEEL free to send me a message @ adebisi-fa@live.com.
Bing Is Not Google, 'cos it's COOL.
Or on Soapbox for that matter (oh, wait... :) )
I read on a twitter that David Eddings had died so I went to Google and typed in David Eddings... and the top choices were the latest news stories on his death. Now I tried Bing and on the first page there wasn't one hit on any news stories on his death. Sorry Microsoft, you still have a long way to go.
This is intelligent internet search in 2009????
How M$ of you.
its guys like you who easily spread FUD, or maybe its just hard for you to understand things. where in my comment I said his way of searching is broken? I would suggest you re-read what I said, particularly the part you referred to untill you understand what I said. if you can't understand it let me try saying it in a way you might understand: he is used to searching for things the google way. (does that make it better for you? do you understand what I meant now? it was easy wasn't it)
just messing with you, but next time please understand what people are saying before you jump on their heads.....
So being that I'm broken by searching the google way ....can you enlighten me on the "bing way of searching???"
Wasting time by going through irrevelant search results until you find what you were REALLY looking for?????
Can they market THAT?
bing .... what you were sorta looking for today!
I'm not going to argue with you man, use what works for you, it so happends that bing works well for me.
because if a person was looking for information on scom.com "Manpower agency for aviation, defence, engineering...." (which has nothing to do with Mircrosoft System Center Operation Manager) they couldn't find it in google by typing in scom but it is there when they Bing it. do you see the differnce here?
Yeah, I see the difference all right! Did you actually try clicking on that link? for scom.com???
It's a dead link...probably why you don't see it in your google results.
And that's the way it SHOULD be!!!!!
Please explain to me how to get to the "Product Details..." of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager" from Google.com?
It's actually possible from bing.com. How?
1) Point to the result for "Microsoft System Center ...";
2) You see a tip? Point to it. Then select "Product Details..."
That's after you might have being briefed about what the product does.
Is that not better than an ordinary HYPERLINK to their product site?
Bing's cool.
calm down guy, your asumption is wrong though about: "probably why you don't see it in your google results.
And that's the way it SHOULD be!!!!!" because if you search "scom menpower" you'll see it popup in google.
so if that was your point then your point has just become invalid.
Not if u know the meaning of BING? BING means '[B]ING [I]s [N]ot [G]oogle'.
Really Nice!
+ My first attempt at its video search, blown me away!
Google Video immediately appears really OLD and in need of a thorough revamp.
I mean it!
BING is coooool.
I have 25 other names that are just as cool then....
Just a guess. What are your other 29 options!
I'll like to know, but make sure they are really relevant to search (& especially Google).
you do know how many letters are in the English alphabet ... right?
If that is true, then MS is learning the Linux way of naming programs.
As for the ad, I like it. It surprisingly effective... for a Microsoft ad. Hmm. Was Microsoft even mentioned? lol
Really Nice!
I like to preview each site in my result before navigating to it. BING does that for me.
I to see my search history (not in the search textbox)! BING does that for me.
BING Picture search is also very awesome. A trial will convince you.
BING is very humble, but EFFECTIVE.
I noticed i always change my search criteria, after the 3rd or 4th page, on any search engine. What is to become of the remaning billions of pages? Only God knows...
I'll appreciate seeing those relevant result in the first 5 (at most) pages, IN A MORE ORGANIZED AND NEAT WAY.
I think BING has achieved that, INSTANTLY!
BING is coooool.
That is Microsoft in a nutshell, eh?
actually the upgrades to the search has worked out well, I heard that the acer f900 was shipping in the UK and I wanted to know if it's HSDPA would work in the US so I Binged "acer f900 radio" and I got the answer in Bing's page preview for the 3rd result....I didn't have to click on the link and search the page for the answer. Bing worked for me.
I was curious so I did the same search at google also and quickly realized that I had to search through 4 links to find what I was looking.
you can do the search too to see if I was lying. so you see, Bing is not "meaningless eye candy".
I think the big loser in this is Yahoo. I just get the feeling that its days are numbered. Not because Yahoo doesn't have some nice features, but because I think it's going to be hard for Yahoo to keep up with Google and Microsoft. In a few years, I think Yahoo will be in the same boat as AOL--kind of an obsolete brand.
btw, you can remove the image from the search page if you find it clutters the page too much like I found it did - hit the help link and you'll see a link that disables the image down at the bottom o f the first help page.
DEFINITION OF THE WORD : BING.
"BING"
Definition from Dictionary.com :
?verb (used without object)
Obsolete.
to go.
Origin: 1560?70; orig. uncert.
Bing\, noun
[Cf. Icel. bingr, Sw. binge, G. beige, beuge. Cf. Prov. E.
bink bench, and bench coal the uppermost stratum of coal.]
A heap or pile; as,
a bing of wood. "Potato bings." --Burns.
"A bing of corn." --Surrey. [Obs. or Dial. Eng. & Scot.]
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
Therefore : BING = An obsolete to go heaping pile...
priceless.
(http://dictionary.infoplease.com/bing)
Pronunciation: (bing), [key]
?n.
a variety of dark red or blackish sweet cherry. Also called Bing' cher'ry.
So Therefore, does this mean that: BING = An obsolete to go heaping pile of dark red or blackish sweet cherry?
plus its not BING its bing, not an acronym, try again, you FAIL.
Sooo... now we're up to: An obsolete to go heaping pile of dark red or blackish sweet cherry with a flatten or disk-like shape.
Can anyone else add to this?
I was posting the dictionary's definition to the word "bing".
Also, try again lennie22, as you missed it, you failed because you did not read my previous post & you confused the word "definition" with the word " acronym"...
bing is perfect for you & the people at Jurassic Park One.
Like the cherries lennard0220?
Google = Cherry
bing = pits
Relavance seems to be an area that they have just caught up on, but not surpased what Google offers. So overall, in my opinion, they are a better fit for what I want a search engine to offer.
Bling still has sketchy results, if this ad makes someone try it and the results are bad, they will never try it again. Google grew its search organically, not through obnoxious advertisements.
Microsoft is good at one thing: shooting off its foot.
- by eudefender June 3, 2009 12:55 PM PDT
- Microsoft is in a difficult situation and experiments a lot. I doubt that they will manage the transformation. Google just needs to kill their cash cows by a distribution of their own operating system.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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- by Seaspray0 June 3, 2009 4:13 PM PDT
- Easier said then done, eudefender.
- Like this
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