Bing Advertising Benchmarks, by Industry

November 14, 2017

Bing wants you to know that it’s “bigger than you think” – to the tune of 1 in every 3 searches conducted in the US. So what can you expect when advertising on Bing? WordStream is out with new benchmarks, noting that on average, advertisers seem to enjoy a stronger performance on Bing than on AdWords.

Click-Through Rate

The median click-through rate (CTR) on Bing across industries is 2.83%, according to WordStream’s analysis of 1,242 US-based client accounts advertising on Bing Ads during Q3 2017. That’s roughly 50% higher than what WordStream’s clients see on AdWords.

Advertisers in the Careers & Employment (3.53%) and Financial Services & Insurance (3.51%) sectors enjoy the highest median CTR, while other verticals with above-average CTRs include Apparel & Accessories (3.33%), Retail (3.06%) and B2B Services (3.01%).

By comparison, the B2C Services category has the lowest median CTR (2.12%), followed by Real Estate (2.2%).

Cost-Per-Click

The median cost-per-click for those advertising on Bing Ads is $1.54, per the report, which is one-third lower than what WordStream’s clients average on AdWords.

The Real Estate vertical, with its low median CTR, has the highest median cost-per-click (CPC) of $2.88. That’s closely followed by Education ($2.79), with Home Improvement & Repair ($2.54) and Auto ($2.52) also well above average.

Careers & Employment advertisers, with their high CTRs, enjoy the lowest CPC – of just $0.75. Apparel & Accessories ($0.91) and B2B Services ($1.16) are also on the lower end of the spectrum; recent data indicates that CPCs for B2B advertisers on Bing fell sharply during Q3.

Conversion Rate

The median conversion rate across industries for Bing advertisers in Q3 was 2.94%, which WordStream says is slightly higher than on AdWords but very much dependent on industry.

The highest average conversion rate is enjoyed by advertisers in the Careers & Employment (6.81%) vertical, with other strong performers sitting a little further back: Financial Services & Insurance (5.57%) and Real Estate (5.13%). The WordStream analysis ties this back to the relatively higher share of desktop searches conducted on Bing compared to Google, which makes it a better bet for industries with longer sales cycles such as those outlined above.

Meanwhile, although Travel & Hospitality (1.58%) lags with the worst conversion rate, WordStream points out that Bing outperforms in clicks in this area (41% of all paid search clicks), making up for the below-average conversion rate.

Cost-per-Action

Finally, the average Cost per Action (CPA) on Bing is $41.44, which is reportedly about 30% lower than on AdWords.

Advertisers in the Home Services vertical enjoy the lowest average CPA of $21.68, with Careers & Employment ($23.71) and Apparel & Accessories ($25.16) advertisers also enjoying costs-per-action well below the average.

WordStream notes that searchers on Bing tend to be older than those on Google, which may explain the better results for Home Services and the far worse returns for Technology advertisers, which average easily the highest CPA (of $102.94).

For more analyses and takeaways, visit WordStream’s findings here.

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