Bing

Microsoft’s new TV advertising campaign to promote Bing begins this week. It focuses on the ‘information overload’ that it says is a feature of Google’s results pages.

Microsoft is making a huge marketing effort with Bing and the TV campaign is a key means of challenging Google’s overwhelming supremacy at present. The overall campaign is said to be costing the software giant $2billion.

The campaign is set to last three months and features three separate TV ads, all of which feature the theme ‘Bing and decide’ and are meant to show Bing as offering more straightforward, easily-interpreted results compared to Google’s.

People are shown asking others for information and receiving nonsense answers. One features a woman asking for directions to Euston station.

The ads will be run for a full month and then in fortnightly bursts thereafter. There will also be a digital campaign running in parallel.

Ashley Highfield, speaking on behalf of Microsoft UK, said:

“People feel overawed by the internet and what they turn up when they are searching. We are also in a world where people have forgotten there is an alternative search engine.”

It has been announced that Microsoft’s Bing search engine will be the new sponsor of The Simpsons when it is shown on Channel 4. The three-month deal is thought to be worth over half a million pounds.

Microsoft is looking to raise awareness about its new search engine and is using traditional advertising means as well as those online. Bing will sponsor The Simpsons on weeknights on both Channel 4 and Channel 4+1. This will be Microsoft’s first TV partnership and will coincide with the 20th anniversary of the immensely popular cartoon sit-com.

The adverts will incorporate Simpsons characters and will be shown before and after each episode as well as in the ad breaks. Different Simpson family members will be shown using the search engine to solve problems.

Bing was launched in November of last year as Microsoft made a renewed effort to close the gap on Google and Yahoo! According to the most recent statistics concerning internet usage, Bing currently has 4 per cent of the market share in the UK, as does Yahoo! Google is still way out in front with 86 per cent of the market.

The Open Net Initiative (ONI) have recently revealed that Microsoft’s much talked-about new search engine Bing is more restrictive than government censors when it comes to online searches for sex-related or explicit content.

Researchers at ONI claimed that a test had been run in January 2010, running queries related to sex, nudity, homosexual or transgender material through a Middle Eastern version of the Bing search engine. The results showed that this country/region specific version automatically filtered out adult content in search results. Users in Arab countries would receive this message:

“Your country or region requires a strict Bing SafeSearch setting, which filters out results that might return adult content,”

The problem with this is that although some Middle Eastern countries employ censorship due to stringent religious restrictions, not all of these nations mandate it. By automatically filtering out explicit content through Bing, many believe Microsoft is threatening freedom of expression. The conductors of the study, ONI, believe Bing’s filtering standards are inconsistent with the ‘freedom of speech’ image the Microsoft Corporation has always worked so hard to promote for their projects and overall company ethos.

At the TED 2010 conference in California this week, Microsoft announced that it has added a number of new features to their Bing Maps service, and brought in Bing Maps architect Blaise Aguera y Arcas to give a demonstration.

During the walk-through of new features, Aguera y Arcas explained that the intention behind the improvements was to make map imagery more useful and interactive. He then unveiled the new features which could potentially push Bing Maps ahead of Google’s Street View application:

1. Streetside Photos – This is Bing Maps’ major new feature, which incorporates geo-tagged videos and photos from Flickr into streetside imagery. In what Microsoft is calling ‘spatial search’, it enables you to see multiple images of the same location, allowing you to see what it would look like over time. For example, you can see how busy a market will be at a particular time of the day, or see how nice the sunset is at hotel you’re hoping to book.

2. Indoor Panoramas – enabling users to explore interior locations using ‘real-time’ video.

3. World Wide Telescope – This feature isn’t available just yet, but when launched, it will enable users to ‘look up’ from the street view at star maps and constellations.

Microsoft’s previous redesign of their Bing Maps service already made it more visually impressive than Google Maps, but it looks like these new features could edge Microsoft ahead of their competition.

Following on from the recent redesign of its homepage, Facebook has also announced a couple of further changes as a result of its partnership with Bing.

Banner ads are to be removed, with a Facebook spokesperson saying:

“Ad formats that feature social actions perform better and provide a better user experience since they are more consistent with the look and feel of Facebook. Facebook ads can also be targeted to people based on the information they provide. This combination of targeting and social relevance is the primary driver behind the shift in strategy.”

Previously, Microsoft had handled banner ads and it will continue to provide search results through Facebook, with a more Bing-like results page in the future. Facebook users should also benefit from more of Bing’s features on these pages, with extra features and richer answers beyond just a set of links.

Bing won the rights to provide Facebook search results in October 2008, although it was Microsoft Live Search at the time. It has plans to incorporate Facebook status updates into search results in the same way as it has included Twitter results recently, although no date has been set for when this will be rolled out.