Less than one month since Google’s decision to advertise during the US Super Bowl was branded by Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand as a desperate move following the pressure piled on by Bing, Bing is turning to TV advertising to boost its low user figures.
The TV campaign is to be shown the UK and is funded by Microsoft, hoping to lure users away from Google. The campaign will run for three months, and will cost millions to the software giant.
The campaign launches tomorrow across every terrestrial channel in the UK, and some satellite channels too, including Sky One.
The tagline Microsoft has chosen to promote its search engine with is ‘Bing and Decide’ – which presumably a lot of people have done already, which is why Microsoft has chosen to ramp up the advertising. Bing is hoping the fact that its pretty design will carry some weight from users who are overloaded with the information they receive from Google… so less is more, with some pictures to add tinsel?
Microsoft UK’s managing director Ashley Highfield commented:
The ad campaign brings to life the concept of Bing as a decision engine, a tool that both cuts through the information overload and offers a new search experience. We’re confident that this will help grow our user base.
The initial aim for Bing is to surpass Yahoo!, which currently has 6.1% of the global search market, compared with Bing’s 3.4%. Google meanwhile has 86% – so some way to go for Microsoft.
