Microsoft’s Bing to Win Market Share?

Microsoft recently rolled out a new search engine called Bing. This launch appears to be another attempt by Microsoft to win over search market share from its main search rivals, Google and Yahoo! Microsoft is reportedly planning to spend over $100 million on promoting the engine.

Bing’s Affect on Pay-per-click Advertising

Bing will have little short-term effect on pay-per-click advertising. Search marketing ads will be syndicated across Bing’s properties just like former Microsoft Live and MSN ads. No pay-per-click changes are anticipated in the near future. In regards to distribution, advertisers should expect to see elevated impression counts in the short run, because the $100 million ad campaign is bound to generate some additional exposure for the engine. If I were you, I’d review my Microsoft adCenter keyword inventories and ad creatives to ensure that my accounts are up to par.

In the long run, if Bing succeeds, adCenter is likely to become a much more important search engine for Internet advertisers.

Bing’s Effect on Consumers

All Microsoft’s search engines are being consolidated into a single engine. MSN.com homepage will now be powered by Bing search. Live.com (Microsoft’s previous attempt to gain some grounds in search) is no longer, well, live. All traffic from Live.com is going directly to Bing now.

Microsoft also consolidated some of its stand-alone services such as Farecast (airline ticket forecasting tool) and Live Cashback (Microsoft’s cashback program) into Bing as well.

Consumers should expect to see and hear more about “Bing the Decision Engine” (to use Microsoft’s marketing term). Some early traffic reports suggested an increase in search queries in the first few days of Bing’s existence, but it remains to be seen whether Bing is going to be the next big thing for Microsoft.

For now only one thing is certain, Bing’s funny and provocative ads (part of the $100 million promotional budget) certainly deserve a round of applause.