B (3:25)

Sure, yeah. I think the best point to go back to is search behavior. And you mentioned before, going to bing.com is one flavor of that behavior. So you're opening up a destination search engine and you're typing in a search query, which is your trigger of intent, if you like. But we've recognized at Microsoft that actually search is an expectant behavior and our users or searches expect more. So essentially what we're after is bringing search into the everyday experience of people's lives rather than just relying on them to go to a kind of manufactured journey of opening up a search browser and making that link between search engine and result. What we're essentially doing is building Bing into the fabric of Windows 10. So you'll see that throughout Windows 10. As I mentioned, I should say at this point we are also continuing to make huge investments in the Bing platform itself and the algorithm to make sure that the search results on that platform stay relevant. But search is also part of the everyday. It's part of the Microsoft Office ecosystem. Voice search on the Xbox is powered by Cortana, Cortana itself, the mobile assistant, powered by the changing face of voice search. And you mentioned before you were quite surprised by some of the, the partners and sources that we are contributing our listings to.

A (4:49)

I absolutely did. And I think the big surprise for me, obviously Bing, Bing from the Microsoft stable, was how far reaching the kind of search reaches within Apple iOS and Apple devices. Just explain to our audience how that works.

B (5:06)

Sure, yeah. This is always a question that kind of comes up in, in customer and partner conversations and that's that Bing actually powers the web results for Siri on iOS devices and also spotlight search, which is quite surprising. And I think at Brighton SEO this was a mouth opening point where people see an Apple logo on a Microsoft slide. But really that's what we're about, kind of opening up and making sure that we fit the user's journey themselves rather than trying to manufacture a journey to support the user. In addition to that, there's Amazon. We're the default search engine on Amazon Kindle devices. And in terms of enriching the Bing experience the other way, Bing uses data from Yelp, from Twitter, From Foursquare, from TripAdvisor to Enhance Our own search results. In terms of apps as well, the ecosystem grows that way as well. So Uber utilizes our mapping technology and there's a number of different partnership cases. But, but really this kind of rolls into the idea that it's not about how we manufacture the journey for a user, it's about how we fit into their lives and we try to partner with the right quality partners to ensure that we are enriching the searchers experience.

A (6:25)

That's brilliant. And there have been quite a few new developments on the Bing platform. Which ones of these do you think marketers should be most interested in? Obviously particularly we're interested in the, the advertising opportunities that are there. But can you just tell us, give us a little bit of a pitch on what Bing can offer advertisers?

B (6:46)

Sure, yeah. So where I come from within the Bing ads business we focus on supporting small and mid sized businesses in their growth from the platform. And we're seeing a number of quality signals coming out of the market, a lot of customers willing to share their positive return on investment stories, positive cost per click gains against competing search and also social and display platforms as well. So it's a really kind of attractive proposition for an advertiser in the moment, I should say. But in terms of products, I'm particularly excited about the development of our Bing shopping product. It came out of beta a couple of months ago and we've really started to gain a lot of traction with advertisers having really positive stories around, around results and actually feedback on the product itself. In terms of the search product, there's a lot to be said about the changing face of search and this is something that I'm particularly passionate about and have spoken about this at Brighton and other places as well. This is around voice search and Cortana and the expectation of a searcher to reach the desired result. We're seeing a 60% increase in question phrases. That really excites me. What does that mean for search in the future? The who questions, the how, the when, the where, what we're after for search, our expectation of search is far greater and as advertisers having to keep up, it's a really, really exciting challenge.

A (8:19)

And that was one of the things that I got very excited about, was making a connection between a couple of things there that you've mentioned, really. We know as marketers that know continually we're getting more and more traffic coming through from, from mobile devices. And in a lot of cases that's now as, as you know, a lot of people predicted in the industry it would. It's more than half. More than 50% of your search traffic is coming through mobile devices. And the other thing we know, if we've ever been involved in any user user experience testing is that mobile users really aren't that keen on tapping in stuff on their keyboards. It's a big no, no. If you can remove that from the journey, it's a big, big, big plus. And so actually the kind of growth stats and interest you were giving on mobile voice search make perfect, perfect sense. But actually it does beg the question, how are we actually building that into. I'm planning to build that into our own websites and applications. Are we still going down the easy old model of just expecting people to open up their keyboards and tap stuff in?

B (9:27)

Yeah, I think that this is a humanization point, isn't it? We've been trusted to believe that searching a kind of a query into a search engine is the new way or the methodical way of expecting a result. But actually bringing the likes of voice assistants into your life, you're kind of allowing yourself to go down another area of expectation. Expectation is the key word here, really. And voice search is just one small factor of that. I think the figure that I spoke about at Brighton was the 50%. So comscore expect by 2020 that 50% of searches will be voice powered. We might or might not choose to believe that that figure will ever be achieved, but certainly on Windows 10 we're seeing that experience increase exponentially. Really. We're seeing a large portion of voice searches on the taskbar and we're seeing a lot of obviously activ with Cortana itself. So there's an expectation, and I called there before some of the increases in question phrases that we're asking. So we're talking really here about the humanization of search rather than what I want to say that the behaviors of times in the past, which is just about that destination search experience.

A (10:45)

And it is, it's remarkable to me that the mass industry didn't automatically adopt billion operators because, you know, they're so much fun, but they've just never really taken off. People would far rather. I think. I can't remember where I. Oh, this was at a recent conference. But somebody said, you know, it is remarkable that in the future people may actually speak into their phones, which is exactly what they were originally aimed at, really. But, you know, with the smartphone explosion, I don't know that we necessarily saw this coming. But now that is exactly what people want to do. They want to talk into their phone. That, that goes further than just speaking to friends and relatives and business contacts. You actually want to speak to your apps and speak to your systems and have them give you results back.

B (11:31)

Sure, absolutely. And Bing, I think, is, I mean, we call it the intelligent fabric. But if we can find a way of tying in our different experiences across our different devices, that's a really empowering. That's a really empowering form to give that forum to give advertisers the chance to enhance their programs. Obviously, it becomes a complex challenge. We're talking about big data, we're talking about devices that didn't exist. You know, when I started off in search 12, 13 years ago, there was no smartphone, there was no tablet. So why should we continue the older behaviors where we have new platforms and new expectations for those out there that.

A (12:10)

Maybe haven't tried Bing or they've not looked at it recently? You. Is there any help available there to help somebody just starting out and get up and running?

B (12:19)

Absolutely. And this is something that really passionate about. And we talk a lot, you know, internally about the experience and the onboarding and incubating advertisers and supporting them to a period where they are comfortable, you know, because I think it's very easy to test something for five minutes and in the future refer back to an unsuccessful test. But if we can support you in growing your programs online on Bing, then great, we have a team of people that are able to support this and actually enter an incubation stage whereby you're essentially handheld. So if you want to test Bing ads, then we're happy to support you on that journey. We're really committed to search and we're really committed to making sure that search is the right forum for an advertiser and where they are experienced searchers to ensure that they can continue to grow their businesses with Bing ads.

A (13:13)

And I'd back that up. You know my experience of being has always, you know, to be honest, it's always been a bit of a secret sauce of mine I find particularly when I was working within the agency world a lot of search agencies kind of dismiss it because they just assume it doesn't have the volume and the results worthwhile investing in. And completely the opposite has been my experience of it. For sure the audiences aren't as big as they are available on some of the other platforms but. But the click through rate and the conversion rate and the return per conversion, particularly from an E commerce perspective has always been way, way over indexing on what I would expect to see from these other larger platforms. So I would encourage anybody listening to this to, you know, experiment, take the plunge, invest, push to invest a bit more of your search budget into Bing and just look at the results and see whether it works for you. Because that's the ultimate acid test. And I'll can give no guarantees that they will but you know, you should try it because I think you might be surprised.

B (14:18)

I think where we kind of look at things is it is quite a unique audience and if advertising programs are about reaching unique audiences and growing those audiences then going to where those audiences are is that option for an advertiser. It's why we have a media mix rather than choose a single channel or a single publisher. In terms of the data that we have to support some of this, there's a number of case studies that you can find on Bing ad website and a number of demographic profiles and unique stats around the Bing ads audience. In the UK we've recently launched an insights portal which will allow you to go a little bit deeper into what that means in your market in terms of spend and conversion as well. We're at a really exciting stage of our journey and our advertisers I think recognize that and it's a responsibility of ours to support them in that journey. Whilst we do continue to change and continue to grow and it's great that we've got some of these really positive case studies around return on investment against other platforms, cost per click gains and it's great that you say secret sauce there. As an advertiser I was also the same. There are very few advertisers certainly in the small and medium business arena who have the luxury of being able to be in position 100% of the time. Aside from that, that just means that there's a whole wealth of challenges out there as to how you gain better return on your investment and better performance for Your search marketing, like you said before, Bing is an option. It might not work for an advertiser, but what we've seen is advertisers really buy into the quality of product and service that we have.

A (16:05)

So, Simon, if we want to find out more about what we've been talking about today, the Bing platform and the kind of results that you guys have been achieving with it, how do we, how do we go about doing that?

B (16:16)

Sure, yeah. So simply just get in touch with us, send us an email. Bing4Success, all one word, Microsoft.com that goes through to our UK sales team, who can support you in your onboarding requirements and help you grow your program in the right fashion. And there's also our Insights portal, our brand new insights portal, which I mentioned earlier. I'll share that link with the audience afterwards so you can share that with your clients if you work on the agency side or find out the areas where there are potentially opportunity for you using Bing ads if you're a direct advertiser.

A (16:51)

Fantastic. And would you be able to send us over the link to the slides you shared at Brighton SEO? Because I think they'd be really interested in those.

B (16:57)

Absolutely. That's ultimately where we got started with this. So, yeah, absolutely. If there's anything that you would like to know, once you've seen those, get in touch with the team at Bing4Success or myself and I'll send over my Twitter handle or my LinkedIn, anything you like. Get in touch.

A (17:16)

Perfect. Well, we wish you every success, Simon, and thank you so much for your time.

B (17:20)

Thanks for having me.

A (17:29)

Thanks for listening to another episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast brought to you by Target Internet. If you'd like to get more information on the show, get hold of back issues of this podcast or get details on any of the links we mention, please visit our website at www.targetinternet.com. if you've enjoyed the show, we would love to read your feedback. Please rate us in itunes or even better, write us a review. Or if you have any questions, please get in touch.

B (17:57)

We'd love to help Sam.