Bing

The New Bing Shopping – A 30-Day Pre/Post Transition Comparison

 Posted by Tien - August 31, 2010 at 5:24 pm

Cashback Flashback

It’s been just over 30 days now since Microsoft shut down its Bing Cashback program which encouraged consumers to purchase items from participating merchants, who in turn would provide them with rebates of varying percentages anywhere from 2% to as high as 40%.

Fast forward to today and Bing Cashback has returned as Bing Shopping. This time they’ve come back as a free comparison shopping engine similar to Google Product Search. Currently they allow  all merchants who qualify to list their products without having to pay a commission to users.

For this post we have gathered data from our own merchants comparing their Bing Cashback performances 30-days prior to the Cashback program shutting down, and comparing them to how the post 30-days have fared for them.

The data we used was provided via our internal tracking systems, comparing the period of July 1 – July 30 to Aug 1 – Aug 30.

July 31st was skipped since that was the final day of Bing Cashback and served as a transition period. Here’s what we found:

When we summed up the traffic totals for all clients in this study, the aggregate numbers saw a drop off of 5.58%.

A drop off was to be expected for two main reasons:

• the new Bing Shopping campaign opened the doors for more merchants to sign up, so current merchants on Bing had to begin competing with more merchants with similar inventory than them, thus shrinking the size of the pie that a merchant previously had.
• without the benefit of receiving a percentage of their order back, consumers may have shied away from using Bing Shopping, since for them the incentive of using Bing Shopping as opposed to Google Product Search or any other CSE was non-existent–they’d have to go back to paying “full” price for goods either way.

The aggregate numbers don’t tell the entire story though–we found that while nearly 2/3s of the merchants we looked at lost traffic, the other 1/3 surprisingly gained traffic.

Breaking down each merchants traffic differences ranging from drops of 68% to gains of 60%. The median drop off was nearly identical to the overall at 5.54%.

Here’s a further breakdown with quartiles (1st quartile = 25th percentile, 3rd = 75th percentile):

So certainly things were skewed in the direction of a traffic drop off, while a good number of merchants have seen traffic gains with the new Bing.

Here is the part merchants should be most concerned with. Traffic spikes don’t amount to much if none of those convert into orders, and traffic drops are irrelevant if somehow the aggregate number of orders remained constant.

Whereas we saw traffic numbers increase for nearly 1/3 of our merchants, less than 20% saw a gain in total orders. Again, here’s our breakdown:

Overall, total sales fell 58.6% when combining all sales generated by Bing.

The story gets uglier here too, as conversion rates (orders / clicks) fell across the board for every merchant whose data we gathered:

Our best merchant saw a drop off of just 3.15%–but a typical merchant saw conversion rates decrease by over 50%.

We had one outlier of a merchant who saw a decent spike in revenue, but again we see a major drop off in total revenue, given the traffic decreases, and the lower conversion rates:

The numbers above were largely to be expected once Microsoft decided to pull the plug on its program.

The minor drops in traffic along with the huge drop offs in conversions and total revenue are the direct result of additional merchants diluting the inventory on Bing Shopping, along with the lower incentive levels in using Bing as compared to any of the dozens of other CSE’s out there.

Bing’s new Shopping platform is mainly a positive for merchants who were unable to get on there previously–much like a swank private nightclub finally opening its doors to the general public. Those used to being among elite crowds are now surrounded by anyone who wants to join.

Still, the positive news for merchants who’ve been on Bing all long is that Bing as a search portal is constantly growing, which should increase the number of users that go to its Shopping platform.

Also, merchants don’t have to worry about losing access to the exclusive club anymore due to a malfunctioning pixel (which was all too common) or due to a balance left unpaid.

And finally, as a free platform there’s no need to worry about fraudulent orders from users trying to game the system (also a common issue), or do much work at all other than regularly sending out a fresh data feed to Bing.

Almost exactly a year ago Microsoft’s  double cashback program (where Microsoft matched whatever % a merchant would give) was so popular that it had to shut it down prematurely, but merchants benefited greatly from it.

We doubt we’ll see much of the same craze again this year, instead the Bing Shopping program should be a more reliable and consistent source of traffic and revenue for its merchants, without any of the headaches that Bing Cashback provided.

Merchant Best Practices with Bing Shopping

 Posted by CPC_Andrew - August 12, 2010 at 12:39 pm

This blog is a continuation of CPC Strategy’s comparison shopping engine (CSE) spotlight on Bing Shopping. July’s CSE spotlight detailed Google Product Search.

Merchant Best Practices with Bing Shopping:

Bing Shopping recently turned free at the end of July, marking the end of Microsoft’s Cashback program. The new-found freedom from click costs has attracted new merchants into Microsoft’s comparison shopping space who are looking to compete for free product exposure. Here’s some tips to make your products stand out from the rest.

Include the most relevant information in your Bing Shopping data feeds.

For best results adhere strictly to the Bing Shopping data feed specs found at the end of the Bing Shopping program merchant integration guide.

1. Include as many attributes about your products as possible (UPC, MPN, Brand, Condition, Description, Image, Shipping & Tax Info).
2. Provide the highest quality information for each product. This includes adding high quality product images and clear product titles.
3. Make sure your data feed is updated regularly to account for any changes to your inventory. This improves your product accuracy and consistency.

When you’re dealing with free engines, the best strategy is provide the most complete data about your products. These tips mimic our Merchant Best Practices with Google Product Search.

Microsoft’s move to a free CSE is attracting numerous new merchants, and in our quarterly comparison shopping rankings we note the high conversion rates our merchants experienced on Bing Cashback. With the addition of numerous new merchants and products, a larger body of Microsoft’s unique users will be able to shop for what they want through Bing Shopping. Hopefully traffic increases and conversion rates hold steady. Your key to tap into this free traffic source is to have detailed product information in your data feed.

Here’s a trick to boost your traffic taken from a great article at PracticalEcommerce.com: For the upcoming holiday season, personalize your product descriptions and titles with holiday-relevant terms such as “Christmas Gift”.

The links below contain information regarding Bing Shopping.

Internet Retailer says bye-bye to Bing Cashback

Bing Shopping FAQ

Bing Shopping Program Merchant Integration Guide

Bing Community blog that reports on Bing Shopping

Comparison Shopping Engine Spotlight: Bing Shopping

 Posted by CPC_Andrew - August 5, 2010 at 1:08 pm

Each month CPC Strategy is releasing a merchant-oriented Comparison Shopping Engine (CSE) Spotlight. Today’s spotlight features the recent release of Bing Shopping, a free CSE like TheFind.com and Google Product Search. We’ll talk about how it operates and why you should list your products there.

If you missed it last month make sure you check out the CSE Spotlight on Google Product Search.

The top three things you need to know about Bing Shopping:

1. Loading products onto Bing Shopping is free. If you’re new to Bing Shopping you can start the application to list your products here.

2. If you were already on Bing Cashback, keep submitting your data feed and you will automatically be brought over to Bing Shopping. Make sure you remove the Bing Cashback tracking pixel and any related Cashback logos from your website.

3. Many of the same best practices with data feed submission for Google Product Search are critical for your success on Bing Shopping, such as submitting clear, descriptive data and mapping all necessary search attributes into the appropriate categories. Click here for a Bing Shopping sample data feed.

How it works:

It’s interesting to compare how Bing’s search results display compares to Google’s. Here’s the search results for watches (click to enlarge):

You can see a product picture box in Bing’s search results that displays products from the watches query, absent in Google’s search results. Also the related searches menu on the left hand side of the Bing search results can help shoppers make a purchasing decision by displaying the most common searches related to a particular search.

Here’s the same search on Google (click to enlarge):

Here’s a picture of the Bing Shopping interface (click to enlarge):

Update the interface completely to ensure the most accurate information reaches your customers.

It will be interesting to see how Bing Shopping converts for our clients. Bing Cashback recently secured second place for the best converting comparison shopping engine category in our quarterly comparison shopping engine rankings. Now shoppers don’t have an incentive to make purchases through the search engine without the Cashback program, which may have an effect on product conversions.

Another topic we’ll be watching closely is if Bing Shopping’s merchant support system increases their responsiveness. Since Bing Shopping is free expect to see an influx of merchants applying to list their products.

Here you can check out how the late Bing Cashback compared to the other comparison shopping engines. Where will Bing Shopping rank in Q3?

Useful links:

Bing Shopping data feed example

Bing Shopping featured in Internet Retailer

Bing Blog detailing the new Bing Shopping

On Thursday 8/12 the Bing Shopping spotlight continues with a merchant best practices blog. Do you have any questions about Bing Shopping? Post a comment here or e-mail contact@cpcstrategy.com and we’ll get back to you.

CPC Strategy Clients can get Pre-Approved on Bing Shopping

 Posted by Rick - July 30, 2010 at 9:03 am

Bing Cashback, Microsoft’s cost per sale comparison shopping engine, is becoming a free CSE starting July 31.

If you’re a CPC Strategy client and you’re already listed on Bing Cashback you will be brought over to the free Bing Shopping program automatically. If you’re a CPC Strategy client that’s new to Bing Shopping you have the unique opportunity to expedite the approval process to the comparison shopping engine by filling out the form below:

www.cpcstrategy.com/bingsignup

If you are NOT a CPC Strategy client and want us to contact Bing on your behalf, please fill out this form below and we will forward your application to Bing.

www.cpcstrategy.com/bingnewclients

With over 80 million unique users Bing Shopping presents a massive audience to your products. This is a shopping engine you don’t want to miss out on.

Bing Cashback to Comeback as Free Bing Shopping

 Posted by Tien - July 20, 2010 at 9:59 am

After announcing the end of its Bing Cashback platform in June, Microsoft has announced the resurrection of their comparison shopping engine via a free Bing Shopping program, similar to Google’s Shopping/Product Search.

It was an expected move from Microsoft, which generated a bit of buzz around the internet, particularly among customers out looking for a deal.

It also was accompanied by headaches with merchants not being able to get on due to delays among Microsoft’s Bing program, as they were constantly being backloaded with requests to be on there.

For merchants currently on Bing Cashback, Microsoft says there’s not much further action needed to participate in the new Free Bing program:

Q. How do I get started?
A. It is easy to onboard your products into the Bing Shopping program. If you are an existing Bing cashback Shopping advertiser, all you need to do is keep sending us your Bing cashback Shopping data feed after July 30, 2010 and it will automatically go into the new Bing Shopping program for free, subject to the new Bing Shopping program Terms of Use.

Q. Will my existing Bing cashback Shopping data feeds automatically transition to the free Bing Shopping data feed on July 31, 2010?
A. Yes, if you continue to send your data feed to us on July 31, 2010 and thereafter.

So there we have it–nothing further needs to be done at this point for merchants currently on there.

It’ll be quite interesting to see what ever loss of traffic a merchant may experience from consumers not receiving any cashback–to the profit gains a merchant will receive, for the same reason.

However, Microsoft does leave the door open for a CPC program being in their future:

Q. What is the cost to send my product catalog through the Bing Shopping program?
A. At this time we are offering you the opportunity to send your product catalog to Bing Shopping for free. In the future, if we charge for use of the Bing Shopping program or change the requirements to use that are free of charge, we will provide notice pursuant to the Bing Shopping program Terms of Use

Complete information on the new Bing Shopping program can be found here.

Microsoft to Shut Bing Cashback Down

 Posted by Tien - June 4, 2010 at 10:15 am

In what is undoubtedly tragic news for merchants around the web, Microsoft has announced in a tweet that they are shutting their (what was thought to be) very successful Bing Cashback program on July 30, 2010:

A farewell 2 Bing cashback thnx 2 all Bing cashback customers & partners for ur support this last year. more: http://cot.ag/dmRPgw

A full explanation can be found at the link above, in which Microsoft cites lower than expected adoption rates for their service for shutting their service down.

One silver lining is that Microsoft is offering hope:

For merchants and advertisers, we have some ideas for making it easy to get a broader array of products and offers into Bing, and we’ll share some details on this later this summer.

It will be interesting to see what the future holds for this channel. But from our perspective, Bing Cashback was a near risk-free outlet for merchants to list their full inventory of products, and not have to deal with any management or worries of overspending.

Source: TechCrunch

Microsoft to Link Bing Cashback and adCenter Accounts Together

 Posted by Tien - April 29, 2010 at 12:56 pm

Similar to Google’s recent Merchant Center/Webmaster tools linking requirement, Microsoft is now migrating merchants with Bing Cashback accounts to their own adCenter platform.

In essence, the Merchant Center dashboard that Cashback users are currently using will soon be retired, and accounts listed on there will now be using Microsoft’s AdCenter platform.

All merchants are required to do is make sure that their user information, particularly their e-mail addresses, is current in their Cashback account, as Microsoft will be sending new login information to that e-mail address.

More information can be found in Microsoft’s Migration FAQ page.

Sample Data Feeds and Feed Specifications for Comparison Shopping Engines

 Posted by Nii Ahene - October 7, 2009 at 10:21 am

Below you’ll find both sample data feeds and links to data feed specifications for the major shopping engines (As of 10/3/2009). It’s highly recommended that you read over the latest specification at the engine resource site before deploying the feeds for your campaigns.
-Nii

Google Base/Google Product Search
- Sample Data Feed for Google Base/Google Product Search
- Google Base/Google Product Search Data Feed Specifications Page

Shopzilla
- Sample Data Feed for Shopzilla
- Shopzilla Data feed Specifications Page

Pricegrabber
- Sample Data Feed for Pricegrabber
- Pricegrabber Data feed Specifications Page

Nextag
- Sample Data Feed for Nextag
- Nextag Data feed Specifications Page

Shopping.com
- Sample Data File for Shopping.com – Varies By Category, see Specification Page
- Shopping.com Data Feed Specifications Page

Bing Shopping
- Sample Data Feed for Bing Cashback
- Bing Cashback Data Feed Spcifications Page

Yahoo Shopping
- Sample Data Feed for Yahoo Shopping
- Yahoo Shopping Data Feed Specification Page (Must be a Yahoo Shopping Merchant to View)

Become
- Sample Data Feed for Become.com
- Become Data feed Specifications Page

Smarter.com
- Sample Data Feed for Smarter
- Smarter Data feed Specifications Page

Pronto
- Sample Data Feed for Pronto
- Pronto Data Feed Specifications Page

Amazon Product Ads
- Sample Data Feed for Amazon Product Ads
- Amazon Product Ads Data Feed Specifications Page (Need to have an Amazon Product Ads account to View)

Microsoft’s Bing Cashback Helps Users Get Discount off Apple’s iPhone

 Posted by Tien Nguyen - June 19, 2009 at 2:53 pm

It isn’t too often that you see the words “Microsoft”, “Apple”, and “help” bundled together in the same sentence–without the words “push off a boat” in it at least–but for the bargain hunters of the world it’s been a known thing that one of Live Bing Cashback’s biggest allure is the discount that they provide on the iPhone.

While most merchants and retailers listed on Cashback generally offer a 5-10% “discount” on their products, AT&T began offering the iPhone at a 35% discount rate compared to their online or in-store prices back late last year via Live Cashback. That promotion helped put Cashback on the map to other users looking for discount deals, albeit rarely as much as 35%.

A new deal that’s surfaced in the past few days then is Apple’s new iPhone, labeled the 3G S, will also be available with a 35% discount via Microsoft.

The deal is red-hot for bargain hunters and Apple fans , alikeand makes plenty of sense for Microsoft to promote since they don’t have a physical phone that directly competes with the iPhone.

Microsoft is the maker of Windows Mobile which is used in many smartphones out there, but based on their marketing budgets, their new search engine Bing, along with their shopping platform is where they would like to see the most growth.

Imagine that then, Apple and Microsoft teaming up, though very indirectly, to help take down Google. It’s quite the world we live in now.

For full details of how to get your 35% cashback, head on over to Fat Wallet.

“Bing Cashback” is the New “Live Cashback”

 Posted by Tien Nguyen - May 31, 2009 at 11:51 pm

Microsoft has just officially launched its new search engine, Bing, which some facetiously say stands for either “But It’s Not Google” or, as a reciprocal acronym, “Bing, It’s Not Google”.

Whatever it may or may not be shorthand for, Microsoft has officially thrown on its gloves and challenging Google at what it does best, search.

Whether or not users will begin to adapt to the new engine is something that only time will tell, so for now we’re going to focus on the shopping experience it provides to users.

First things first, directly on the Bing homepage is a link for Shopping, which didn’t exist before when it was called Live (and currently exists on Google).

Clicking on the tab takes a user, appropriately enough, to the Bing Shopping page, where as we’ve discussed previously, highlights Cashback toward the top.

But now by virtue of the shopping page receiving exposure via the home page should certainly increase the amount of users who actually enter the shopping page and use it as a platform the way they’re using Google Product Search.

We’ve certainly noticed a steady increase in our merchants revenue via the Cashback platform as of late–though it’s hard to tell if it’s directly because of this change.

As with before as well, a search that Microsoft recognizes as a popular product search will be highlighted with popular brands, and price ranges that a user can click through (similar to Google’s “one box” feature):

We will continue to monitor if user adoption of Cashback continues to increase as users begin to adopt Bing either plain curiosity, or because their shopping section is now directly on the home page–or simply by the natural increase of online retail in general.

We here at CPC Strategy though certainly approve of any methods that make the online shopping experience that much easier.