Microsoft's search offering Bing is ramping up its presence in Australia, with the past nine months seeing the business double its local headcount as its market share grew from 10.8% to 14.1%.
Often seen as being in the shadow of Google and despite admitting it's the underdog, Bing is well and truly investing in this market with the company also announcing the launch of its partnership network. The new venture aims to forge stronger relationships with local agencies and advertisers.
Despite going all in locally, Bing and Microsoft are acutely aware of its number two to Google's number one, however general manager for Bing ads marketing, Steve Sirich, explained that knowing the time spent with Bing is important makes the brand strive to better its offering.
“It's not an easy job for us, that's why we approach it with a certain amount of humility. We know we're the underdog, we know that when you think about the time spent with Bing it's precious because we're not the default experience.”
“We recognise that Google enjoys that today, but we do feel we have a unique audience, we have a unique set of clicks. If you're a small business or an enterprise customer there's still value in reaching that audience.
“We have to respect that we're asking for a share of time from advertisers and agencies and we have to be very respectful that we're creating as much as we can in the way of innovation, the time we get is precious and it has to be productive for marketers,” he added.
With the launch of the partner network Bing is hoping to focus on creating experiences with and for brands. Sirich says that brands locally are keen to get started with the technology business, adding that they're excited to get greater access to the “power of Microsoft”. He also says advertisers are welcoming the competition to the likes of Google.
“What we hear from customers is that they really want to see healthy competition. [They want to see] there’s opportunities to differentiate and that's a function of having more than one player that is dominant in an area of business.
“A message we always leave our customers with is Bing is bigger than you know – Google doesn’t even talk about share, they don't have to – but we have to talk about it because we have to put a perspective behind our growth.”
Australian head of strategic sales for Bing Ads, Deb O’Sullivan, explained the recent growth in the search offering can be linked to the launch of Microsoft Windows 10, but also as Bing is now incorporated across the whole Microsoft ecosystem.
“We find now it's not just growth through Windows 10. That’s what started the growth, but now that Bing is incorporated through the entire Microsoft ecosystem all of the sections are driving searches to Bing.
“From a marketer and advertiser perspective, they love the fact that Bing offers them a legitimate alternative – and that's what I’m really passionate about,” O’Sullivan explained.
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