I have been meaning to write this post for a while, but it kept getting delayed. Then Mashable published this article about Google Advertising on Twitter.
So I figured now is as good a time as any.
I am no ad buying expert, but if Microsoft can bid on very cheap/obscure keywords (i.e. the extreme longtail) - e.g. every single keyword that costs $0.01 or less (if that even exists), assuming that the revenue they can generate per lead is greater than $0.01, then why not do it? Then from there, experiment with $0.02 keywords, and progress accordingly.
It is possible (I would think), by doing that - rather than an aggressive mainstream media advertising blitz - that their conversion rates would be much better and they could steal a good chunk of Google’s traffic.
Naturally, it has to make economic sense. I imagine they must measure the cost of every lead and with the waste that is generated with large TV campaigns, it’s not hard to conceive that a strict online ad inventory buying campaign would generate warmer leads than an offline TV campaign.
Am I wrong? Would love to hear some thoughts on that.
Edit: Some interesting links provided to me by the thread on Hacker News, although they don’t specifically point out data from Bing, it is interesting nonetheless: