According to Nielsen, Microsoft’s Bing grew 22% in August, increasing it’s share of searches to 10.7%. To many critics surprise, it appears as though Microsoft has reinvented its search business. Taking advantage of the recent merger with Yahoo, the two search engines now provide close to 27% of all searches, pleading their case to be included into marketer’s campaigns. These finding indicate that Bing’s massive marketing campaign was successful by resulting in a boost. Will Bing’s novelty wear off, or has it become a real competitor in the space? I guess only time will tell. What are your predictions?

The answer will be revealed on August 5th, when Bing announces the winner, who will hold title to Bing’s new jingle (or “bingle” as they like to call it) and a $500 AmEx gift card!  Be warned – time is running out…you only have one more week to submit your entry on Bing’s You Tube site!  The contest winner will be picked based on number of views and quality of ratings they get on their video submission.

This is another perfect example of a company attempting to use viral marketing as a new way to market, advertise and connect with prospects and customers.  They are utilizing a creative way to spread conversational buzz about their search engine and with hopes – begin to compete on the same level as the Google giant.

I’m interested to see how well the campaign will be received and picked up by online users.  Check back in early August for a follow up on their campaign performance!

As an avid Google fan, when I started seeing commercials for the new search engine Bing by Microsoft, I can’t say I wasn’t intrigued. The commercials were catchy, the name was different, the site layout appeared to be organized and sophisticated, but all these factors still haven’t been enough to get me to try out the new engine.

Search engines are an important part of the advertising world. What sites are consumers using? What areas of a site have the most traffic flow? Where will we be best able to reach our target audience? Out of the 763 adult Internet users surveyed, about 70% have not changed their search engine activity. It seems to me that although a few people are checking Bing out, our best bet is going to be continuing to use the well-beloved Google search engine.

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