Bing Buzz and the Holidays: Bing Travel
In my last Bing Buzz and the Holidays post, I pointed out how the marketing momentum surrounding Bing’s release over the summer is only increasing as it reaches more and more people, encouraging them to “Bing and decide” for themselves over the holiday season. Given the metrics surrounding Bing’s success thus far, there is ample opportunity for advertisers of all shapes and sizes to capitalize on that buzz in directing gift-seeker holiday traffic to their websites.
When I think about the approaching holiday season, two things come to mind. First, shopping for gifts. most notably toys and games for my son. Second, making travel plans to visit family back in New England. As the purpose of this post is to make you, Dear Advertiser, aware of how the buzz around Bing can work to your benefit, I’m going to focus on the latter of those two top-of-mind holiday priorities.
Bing Travel
Have you checked out Bing Travel yet? Other than following that link, you can also get there from the main Bing page by clicking on “More” from the links along the top:
And from there, “Travel”:
Once there, you’ll find an interface very similar to those you see on other travel search related sites like Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, etc. a search box where you enter your flight information to search for the best deals.
Looking at the example below, I’ve entered in my travel information to fly from Seattle to Boston on the dates before and after the holidays. When the results come back, not only do I get information about flights that might fit my schedule based on the criteria I entered, I’m also informed that I should hold off on booking it because trends show an 80% chance that prices may drop soon (circled in red) and I also see several ads run by adCenter advertisers (blue arrows):
As a consumer, this information is incredibly helpful; the less money I spend on travel, the more I can spend on gifts for my friends and family this year. I think you see where I’m going with this.
Because Bing’s value proposition and branding is all about helping users make better-informed decisions, illustrated here by the 7-day Price Predictor tips, the potential of Bing Travel becoming a valuable travel resource could help increase opportunity for adCenter advertisers within the travel vertical.
If you’re already running travel related PPC campaigns in adCenter, you don’t need to do anything different to be included in the search results page on Bing Travel, results are pulled from adCenter the same way they would be for ads on the main Bing page. In this case, the ads I’m seeing were populated based on the fact that I’m flying out of Seattle and into Boston. Alaska Air is a major player at SeaTac Airport (the first result in the right-hand column) and there are four ads between the two columns that reference Boston specifically.
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