Microsoft Wants Consumers to Rethink Search? Yeah, Good Luck With That
I just read an article on AdAge.com that talks about how Microsoft is going after Google with a new ad campaign and a new search engine called Bing. It seems like every few months there is the next “Google Killer” that promises to revolution search. Remember Cuil? Now the buzz is on Wolfram Alpha. The issue isn’t whether or not Google is the best search engine in regards to relevant results - it comes down to the fact that Google is good enough.
The software giant (Microsoft) is set to launch an $80 million to $100 million campaign for Bing, the search engine it hopes will help it grab a bigger slice of the online ad market. That’s a big campaign — big compared with consumer-product launches ($50 million is considered a sizable budget for a national rollout) and very big when you consider that Google spent about $25 million on all its advertising last year, according to TNS Media Intelligence, with about $11.6 million of that focused on recruiting. Microsoft, by comparison, spent $361 million. Certainly Google has never faced an ad assault of anything like this magnitude.
I love the name Bing for an online brand but hate it for the name of a search engine, how soon before we start seeing ads with “Bing! Your search is done” everywhere? Putting the name aside will Microsoft’s Bing be a better search engine? Possibly. Will the average user actually stop using Google because Bing is better? Probably not. Google is firmly entrenched as being synonymous with searching online and that won’t go away anytime soon. Google has the brand association that can not be bought …as long as people continue to “Google it”, no other search engine stands a chance.
So what should Microsoft do? They should focus their ad campaign on being #2. Admit defeat, crown Google the king and go after Yahoo’s search share. A “We’re #2″ ad campaign will not only be effective but probably save the company millions. But Microsoft has billions in cash so they will have no problem spending whatever they want - can’t wait to see all those articles talking about how they spent $100 million and upped their market share only 2%.
BING!
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