New Native Ads in Bing: What You Need to Know

The Digital Essentials, Part 3

Developing a robust digital strategy is both a challenge and an opportunity. Part 3 of the Digital Essentials guide series explores five of the essential technology-driven experiences customers expect, which you may be missing or not fully utilizing.

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Bing Ads has started running a new kind of paid ad currently in beta called a native ad. Native ads are shown on non-search MSN web pages in line with the page’s content. The ad also has a relevance to the content on the page.  For example, a paid search ad selling car insurance might show up on a page with an article about cars.
Any search ads currently in a Bing Ads account are automatically eligible to be used as a native ad.

Bing Ads boasts that the audience is more qualified and the ads tend to receive higher click-through rates than typical display ads due to the relevancy of the ads to the user.
If your ads have started running as native ads, you’ll see this new line item along with the totals for your campaign data.

What does this mean for your account? Most accounts see better click-through rates and conversion rates with lower CPCs in Bing Ads compared to Google, but unfortunately the traffic is much lower. These ads increase the visibility potential for a similar audience to help you gain more traffic from Bing.
It is recommended for most accounts to let native ads run for a while to see what performance is like. If they perform similarly to your search ads, then great! You’ve just increased your well-performing traffic. If they don’t perform well, or if you just don’t have enough budget to increase visibility, then it is possible to opt out of natives ads. To do so, go to your campaign settings and scroll down to Advanced Settings and click on the Native Ads drop down. Here, you’re given the opportunity to increase/decrease bids. By decreasing bids by 100%, you will no longer show native ads.