Google Shopping vs. Bing Shopping Ads: How are They Different?

If you do a search for “Google vs Bing” online, you’ll find plenty of articles with aggressive titles like “Search Engine Showdown” and “Bing it On.”
But we’re not here to talk about the search side of things. When it comes to retail advertising, there’s no question that shopping ads, formerly known as PLAs, are huge for ROI–and we’ve had plenty of experience using both platforms for our clients.
So is there a clear winner between Bing Shopping and Google Shopping?
Well, it all depends on your goals. And sometimes, it makes sense to advertise on both.
To help you make the decision for your business, we’re going to go through the pros, cons, and major differences between Google Shopping and Bing Shopping.
The first thing you’ll notice is that Google has a longer history than Bing in the overall search department–and this is the key to understanding why Bing is still lagging behind.
2007
Froogle is renamed “Google Product Search”.
This is the early version of Google Shopping featuring Product Listing Ads (PLAs), and it’s still free.
2012
Google Product Search becomes Google Shopping.
Advertisers must now pay to play on the Google Shopping network.
2006
MSN adCenter introduced (displayed Yahoo! ads).
2012
MSN adCenter renamed to Bing Ads.
2013
Bing Product Search introduced and Bing Shopping sunsets.
Google Shopping Countries
All Google shopping ads appear in the following countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Czechia, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Norway, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, the Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, the UK, and the US.
Bing Shopping Countries
All Bing Shopping Product Ads are available in the following countries: United States, United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany, and Canada (English only)
More Resources: Expand Your Business to Other Google Shopping Countries
We’ve written a lot about the Google Shopping feed, which is nuanced and requires optimization to perform well on Google Shopping. We haven’t written quite as much about optimizing your Bing Shopping feed–but it’s just as important.
Pro-tip: Bing offers users the ability to integrate their Google Shopping feed into the platform. Learn more about that below.
Importing options:
Formats accepted: text (.txt) and XML (.xml)
Required fields:
Optional fields:
More Resources:
Importing options:
Formats accepted: Tab delimited plain text with extensions: .txt, .zip, .gz, .gzip, .tar.gz, .tgz. XML files only supported if they are existing Google-formatted XML files.
Required fields:
If you are syncing your Bing feed from your Google Shopping feed, the following fields must match exactly:
If you are only using Bing Product Ads, you can view their required and option fields here.
Otherwise, you can simply use your Google Shopping file and Bing will ignore the fields that are not relevant.
Update 4/26/2017: Advertisers can now make product availability and price changes via a supplemental feed without re-uploading the main feed.
According to NetMarketShare, Google’s current search market share for desktop is 77.43% while Bing’s is 7.31%. On mobile and tablet, Google’s market share is 96.01% while Bing’s is just 0.84%.
And Google’s still growing. A report in August 2016 showed that Google’s overall search market share month-over-month in desktop was Google: 79.88% (compared to 79.17% the month before.)
On mobile, Google’s market share was an astounding 94.53% (slight growth from the month before, which was 94.02%).
In contrast, Bing’s month-over-month market share on desktop was 6.39% (staying the same as the previous month, which was 6.39%), while mobile share was merely 1.01% (1.08% the month before).
There are other competitors in the search space, but nearly all of them were stagnant compared to Google’s growth.
Although there’s a clear winner in market share, you should have a clear understanding of who’s using both platforms before you write off Bing as irrelevant.
We’ve established already that mobile is huge for Google, and has been driving much of its growth.
Data indicates that over half of Google’s searches now come from mobile.
FREE Download: Mobile Performance on Google Shopping [Study]
According to our own research based on client data, from 2014 – 2016 (Q1 2014 – Q1 2016), clicks for Google PLAs on mobile devices with full browsers increased by 389.7%.
We know Google users love mobile. But what do they look like, and how do they shop? Although we don’t have data on who uses Google Shopping specifically, we can look at search numbers to get a rough idea.
Here are some of Google’s user stats:
Note: Google’s data around users (demographic information, etc.) is much more difficult to find that Bing’s, but as new data rolls out, we will update this post.
Source: Think With Google
Source: Bing Ads
While Bing users are less likely to access search on the go via mobile, it’s important to note the spending power of the average user–46% of Bing users have an annual household income over $75k, and 31% of that segment reaches beyond $100k.
The spending power is there–and if that looks like your target audience, you’re in luck.
Desktop
Google Shopping product listings show up in four places on desktop:
Mobile
Notice the clean format–every photo appears on a white background (according to feed specs), and it’s easy to filter through results on the Shopping tab.
Desktop
Bing Ad Formats show up in three places on desktop:
Mobile
Note there isn’t a tab specifically for shopping on Bing–when you click on a product, it takes you directly to the site. The shopping tab was removed.
We took a look at how some of our retailer campaigns performed for both Google and Bing Shopping.
Keep in mind these are not indicators of exactly what you will see for both networks. Rather, the data is a reflection of our unique strategy for both Google Shopping and Bing Shopping.
Avg. CPC for Google Shopping Campaigns: $0.48
Avg. Revenue per Google Shopping Campaign: $6,697.32
Avg. ROAS per Google Shopping Campaign: 751%
Avg. Revenue per Click for Google Shopping Campaign: $3.58
Avg. CPC for Bing Ad Account: $0.33
Avg. ROAS for Bing Ad Account: 1345%
Avg. Revenue per Click for Bing Ad Account: $4.43
As you can see, Bing’s ROAS per account is extremely high. Although there are no guarantees (based on your strategy and market), it’s clear that there is money to be made on the platform.
As you parse the data, you may notice query data in Google Shopping is limited to Account or Campaign level.
Bing recently introduced the ability to provide search query data at the product level. Dianne Manansala, Retail Search Manager at CPC Strategy, explains why this matters:
“Bing now has the ability to provide us search query data at the product level. Google doesn’t even give us the ability to easily view that yet. Currently, in Google, we are able to view product level search queries, but it is a long workaround and isn’t exactly foolproof. Having this data easily available can tell us if a certain product is responsible for driving specific highly inefficient non-converting queries.”
There you have it. In our quest to determine the differences between the two platforms–we may have swayed you in one direction. However, keep in mind that it’s entirely possible to have a successful strategy that spans both.
Have questions? Share in the comments below.