Are Bing Users More Likely to Click on Ads than Google Users?

Are people who search on Bing more commercial than Google (GOOG) searchers? According to a study by search-advertising network Chitika, visitors who arrive at sites from organic search results on Bing are 55 percent more likely to click on an ad than if they arrived from Google.

Chitika looked at the clickthrough rates from 32 million ad impressions across its network of more than 50,000 sites in a week in July. Visitors from Bing clicked on an ad 1.5 percent of the time on average, versus a 0.97 percent clickthrough rate for Google visitors and a 1.24 percent clickthrough rate for Yahoo.

One reading of this data might be that Bing users are more susceptible to ads, and in fact may have used Bing in the first place because of the Bing ads Microsoft (MSFT) is plastering all over the place. (Kinda makes you wonder what will happen when that ad budget goes away).

But a more likely explanation is that Google represents the vast bulk of the traffic, 83 percent to be exact. Bing only represents 8 percent. There is a law of large numbers at work here. The more traffic that comes from any one source (i.e., Google), the lower the clickthrough rate is likely to trend. If the market share was reversed, Bing would undoubtedly have a lower clickthrough rate.

But that still leaves the question of just who are those people on Bing?

	impressions	clicks	CTR	% more clicks (Bing)
google	26,929,367	260,518	0.97%	55.11%
yahoo	3,157,648	39,008	1.24%	21.47%
bing	2,236,366	33,558	1.50%
total	32,323,381	333,084	1.03%

Original post

Comments

[guliamo:]

I agree.. I wouldn't read much into that stat..
Microsoft has users that are far less advanced than mainstream internet users.
Usually people searching MSN are those who don't know how to change their default page settings - either small kids or people who aren't internet savvy - those two groups are the biggest 'clickers' on the net..

Jul 26 09:56 AM

[Dean Saluti:]

I second Guliamo's thought. It is entirely to early to try and do any comparison's between Bing and Google. In fact a more apt comparison would be Google Vs. the rest of the field of Search Engines. Bing is new so I'm sure a lot of users are testing it out. We need to wait and see if Bing can garner retention of enough users to level the planning field with Google in terms of users.

Jul 26 10:23 AM

[PCW:]

I'll conjecture that Bing users are more likely IE users that cannot use ad blocking features or add-ons found in other browsers.

For example, if you have ads on this page..I can't see them :)

Jul 26 12:16 PM

[luvogt:]

Erick - The real explanation is much simpler - Bing is showing fewer low quality ads as part of the post-launch marketing blitz. This costs them money, but increases their CTR. The real question is whether this CTR bump will be sustained after the marketing money runs out...

Jul 26 05:49 PM

[jack dee:]

There is no law of large numbers when it comes to ratios for click to purchase, that is silly crapola.


There is a simple reason Bing has a better click through and purchase rate , if you dont already know you must have no Frigging idea what you are talking about. The dogs on the street know this one.

Jul 27 03:03 AM

[Josh B Thom...:]

it would appear bing cannot win with you.

Jul 27 03:13 AM

[rdawood:]

I think it's silly to try to conclude anything about Bing users at such an early stage. Bing is so new; there are no regular users to characterize or to compare with those of google or yahoo.

The reason people today know what Bing is in the first place is because of mass advertising by Microsoft. A lot of these ads were in the form of online banners that you can click on. If a significant amount of Bing's traffic arrived there by clicking on these ads, would it surprise you to find out that a lot of the same people then clicked on Bing-hosted ads as well?

Jul 27 03:38 AM

[tonkatsu:]

Bing puts its own "cashback" offers in ads, and many people use searches on Bing to access special cashback deals. Google doesn't do this.

Jul 27 03:01 PM

[gniuz:]

agree with jack dee.
i wrote about this also www.cheatad.com/2009/0.../


On Jul 27 03:03 AM jack dee wrote:

> There is no law of large numbers when it comes to ratios for click
> to purchase, that is silly crapola.
>
>
> There is a simple reason Bing has a better click through and purchase
> rate , if you dont already know you must have no Frigging idea what
> you are talking about. The dogs on the street know this one.

Aug 10 04:51 AM

[gniuz:]

@luvogt: it doesn't have anything to do with ads served by bing. this is chitika report for user coming from bing


On Jul 26 05:49 PM luvogt wrote:

> Erick - The real explanation is much simpler - Bing is showing fewer
> low quality ads as part of the post-launch marketing blitz. This
> costs them money, but increases their CTR. The real question is
> whether this CTR bump will be sustained after the marketing money
> runs out...

Aug 10 04:54 AM