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.

FREE Guide: Product Feed Optimization 101

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.

Google vs Bing Shopping: History + Availability

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.

Google Shopping History

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.

Bing Shopping History

2006

MSN adCenter introduced (displayed Yahoo! ads).

2012

MSN adCenter renamed to Bing Ads.

2013

Bing Product Search introduced and Bing Shopping sunsets.

Availability by Country

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

Google vs Bing Feeds

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.

Get the Guide: Google Shopping Feed Optimization for Retailers

Google Shopping Feed

Importing options:

Feed uploading to Merchant Center
Content API for Google Shopping
Import from a supported e-commerce platform

Formats accepted: text (.txt) and XML (.xml)

Required fields:

Product ID
Title
Description
Link
Image link
Availability
Price
Google Product Category (GPC)
Brand
GTIN
MPN (if product does not have assigned GTIN)
Condition
Adult
Multipack (Australia, Brazil, Czechia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US)
Is_bundle (Australia, Brazil, Czechia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US)
Age group (Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the US as well as all products with assigned age groups)
Color (Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the US as well as all products available in different colors)
Gender (Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the US as well as all products available in different colors)
Material
Pattern
Size
Item group ID (Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the US if the product is a variant)
Shipping (Australia, Czechia, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, and the US)
Tax (US only)

Optional fields:

Additional image link
Mobile link
Availability date
Expiration date
Sale price
Sale price effective date
Unit pricing measure
Unit pricing base measure
Installment payment plan (Brazil only)
Loyalty points (Japan only)
Product type
Identifier exists (products with no GTIN or MPN)
Energy efficiency class (EU & CH)
Size type
Size system
Adwords redirect
Excluded destination
Custom label
Promotion ID
Shipping weight/length/width/height

More Resources:

Bing Shopping Feed

Importing options:

Feed uploading to Bing Merchant Center

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:

Product ID
Brand
Product type
Category
Custom label
Condition

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.

Google vs Bing Market Share

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%.

Data rounded. Based on 2017 data from NetMarketShare.

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.

Google vs Bing Users

Google Demographics

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:

1.17 billion unique monthly searchers
11.095 billion monthly searches

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

Bing Demographics

160 million unique searchers (per month)
5 billion monthly searches
51% female
44% married
1/5 U.S. South Atlantic
40% between 35-54 years old
1/3 has household income of $100,000+

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.

Google Shopping Ads vs Bing Shopping Ads

Google Shopping Ad Formats on Desktop & Mobile

Desktop

Google Shopping product listings show up in four places on desktop:

Image search
Top of SERP
Right side (next to search results)
Google Search Partner websites

Google Shopping Ads in Image Search

Google Shopping Ads Above Search Results

Google Shopping Ads on Right Side Rail

Mobile

Google Shopping Ad on Mobile (Image Tab)

Google Shopping Ad on Mobile (Top of SERP)

Google Shopping Ads on Mobile (In Shopping Tab)

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.

Bing Shopping Ad Formats on Desktop & Mobile

Desktop

Bing Ad Formats show up in three places on desktop:

Right side (next to search results)
Top of SERP

Bing Shopping Ads on Desktop (Right Side Rail)

bing shopping product listing on desktop browser

Bing Shopping Ads on Desktop (Top of SERP)

Mobile

Image search
Top of SERP

Bing Product Search Ad on Mobile (top of SERP)

Bing Shopping Ad on Mobile (Image Tab)

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.

Ad Metrics Per Platform

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.

Google Shopping Ad Results (Campaign Level)

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

Bing Shopping Ad Results (Account Level)

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.