Who's spending $80 million to $100 million for an Ad Campaign?

Well, if you want to win market share as a revamped search engine, that would be Microsoft’s promotion of Bingbing-logo4

The question is, what search engine is so good and has more meaningful features that you would actually switch from using Google?  And, with Google having almost a 70 percent market share of the search engine usage, that calls for some stiff competition.

comScore recently released some early indications that are somewhat positive for Bing, and although the initial trials were favorable, it will be interesting to see if these turn into market share growth.

comscore_bing-results1So let’s get back to the question why Microsoft is spending that kind of money on advertising in this economy.  Seems as if local search represents a huge, relatively untapped revenue source.  There are numerous estimates out there that are saying that the local search industry could eclipse 15 billion dollars in the next several years … I guess spending $100 million just might be worth the investment if they can get a good enough percentage of that return.

Any guess as to why Microsoft chose to name their search engine “Bing?”  Supposedly the name was “memorable, short, easy to spell and would function well as a URL around the world.  Also, the word would remind people of the sound made during “the moment of discovery and decision making.'”

Leave a Reply