Marketers Now Able to Extend People-Based Search across Bing to Maximize Scale of Top Campaign Performers

LiveRamp, an Acxiom company and leading provider of omnichannel identity resolution, announced a new integration with Microsoft Bing Ads to deliver people-based search capabilities in Bing Ads Custom Audiences. Supported by LiveRamp’s identity resolution service, IdentityLink, Bing Ads Custom Audiences will allow targeting or retargeting of search ads at the individual level, empowering search marketers to extend and activate their existing CRM segments to Bing with precision and ease. As a result, consumers can expect to have a more meaningful and seamless experience throughout the digital ecosystem with more relevant, personalized messaging from the brands that they value and prefer.

Bing and Google comprise 90-93 percent of the global search market, with Bing powering its share of that market across Bing Networks, Microsoft Search, Yahoo! Search and AOL Search. The LiveRamp integration allows advertisers to integrate search activity on Bing with the people-based marketing initiatives they power through IdentityLink in other channels. Such functionality is appealing to any search marketer looking to improve conversion at a reasonable cost-per-acquisition (CPA).

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“In January of this year alone, the top four online search engines fielded 17.5 billion core search queries. While that’s a powerful pool for advertisers to dip into, historically they had to choose between Google Customer Match or Bing Ads Custom Audiences to improve campaign performance,” said Jeff Smith, chief marketing officer and general manager of brands, LiveRamp. “By adding LiveRamp IdentityLink to Bing Ads Custom Audiences, we’re giving search marketers the ability to integrate their efforts across these two powerful channels. They can distribute the same segments used for Google Customer Match to Bing Ads to lower their CPA while increasing conversion rates and return-on-ad-spend.”

2018 is quickly proving to be the year that brands and advertisers put a premium on enhancing the customer experience at every possible touchpoint, and their online journey most often begins at the search level. Annual digital ad expenditures reflect this trend as search continues to command a significant portion (44.4 percent) of total marketing dollars. Further, industry analyst Forrester expects search advertising to experience a renaissance in 2018. Shifts in the digital media landscape – privacy restrictions, brand safety concerns, ecommerce growth, and the popularity of voice-based search – all make search marketing an appealing option for marketers who want maximum return-on-investment.

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“Our customers expect us to work with them to optimize their search-based marketing campaigns with Bing Ads Custom Audiences, but we felt we could be doing more to optimize the effectiveness of customer matching,” said Brian Utter, general manager of Bing Network and Demand for Microsoft. “By integrating with LiveRamp, we will continue to deliver quality converting traffic for advertisers across our search properties, with the added benefit of cookie-based matching at the individual level to drive more relevant, more effective advertising. LiveRamp is a great partner, with their proven people-based marketing techniques and commitment to innovation.”

Existing Bing Ads customers interested in using Bing Ads Custom Audiences powered by LiveRamp can do so by logging into their Connect account, entering their Bing Ads Account information, and selecting their audience. The variations of custom audiences can be endless based on an advertiser’s goals, but a few examples are customers who have purchased in the past week, month or three months, or customers located in Texas vs. California.

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