If you’ve ever tried to advertise your business online, Google Ads is probably the first, and potentially only online ad platform you’ve learned how to use. There’s a good reason for that, too. Google Ads is the largest online advertising tool out there, and it’s as dominant as it is because it places ads on Google, the largest search engine out there. However, there are other popular search engines outside of Google, and most of them have their own advertising platforms as well.

Bing and Yahoo are likely the world’s second and third most popular search engines, each with their own loyal user base you won’t be able to advertise if you just use Google Ads. Luckily, both have their own advertising platforms that work similarly to Google’s, but with a few key differences setting them apart.

So we wanted to deep dive into both platforms, explain how they work, how they differ from Google, and why using them might give you an advertising edge over your competitors.

1. Bing’s Advertising Service

Longtime business owners might remember a service called “Bing Ads,” which was the search engine’s answer to the popular Google Ads on Bing’s rival platform. Well, while Bing Ads no longer exists (at least under the same name), businesses can still advertise on the search engine via Microsoft Advertising, which is essentially the same service on the same search engine, just under new branding.

Microsoft Advertising lets businesses set up pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, which means you only pay when a potential customer clicks on your ad. PPC advertising isn’t unique to Microsoft, but it is a welcome feature since it means you only have to pay for the ads that reach your target audience.

One note to keep in mind is that roughly 9% of the Internet’s monthly search inquiries happen on Bing and Microsoft platforms, while Google owns well over 80% of the Internet’s overall search traffic. But while 9% sounds minuscule in comparison, that still means there are about 6.4 billion searches on Bing every month; meaning your ads will have plenty of chances to pop in front of potential customers.

2. How Microsoft Advertising Works

After creating a Microsoft Advertising account you can start building your ad campaign. As long as you have your images ready and a sense of what keywords you’ll need, the process shouldn’t take longer than a few minutes.

Select Your Goal: The first decision you’ll have to make for your ad campaign is what you want the results of your ads to be. Some of the options include more visits to your website or storefront, more online sales, and better conversion rates. Selecting a campaign goal will help the platform determine where and how to showcase your ads.

Build The Foundation For Your Ad: This is where you’ll choose what types of ads you want to run and what you want the keywords to be, as well as submit any images you want to use. Ad keywords help search engines determine who sees your ad, so this is a crucial step for reaching your target audience. For example, if you’re creating an ad for a restaurant, you’ll want to submit keywords that people will use when they’re searching online for places to eat, like location and the type of food you serve.

Set Your Budget: With your ad nearly ready to launch, you can now select how much you want to spend per day and per click. Microsoft Advertising doesn’t require a minimum budget, so you can spend as much (or as little) as you’re comfortable with on your campaign.

Start Advertising: You’re now ready to launch your ad campaign! Microsoft Advertising has lots of tools for you to monitor your ads with after they go live so you can adjust them as needed.

3. Advantages of Using Microsoft Advertising

It’s impossible to deny that Google is vastly more popular than Bing, but Bing’s comparatively niche market can be advantageous for savvy business owners with well-designed ads.

For example, since Google is so popular, every advertiser on the planet wants their marketing material to pop up there, which is why it's the first and only place many businesses go for online advertising. But that oversaturation means some qualified businesses won’t see the boost they should from their ads because they’re being overshadowed by larger companies with larger budgets.

In theory, you want your ads to go on the platforms that get the most attention. However, in competitive industries like restaurants or grocery stores, it could make sense to market on a platform with fewer users because you won’t have to combat as many competing advertisers. Advertisers in niche sectors might have little trouble standing out on Google, but within more crowded fields, you’ll need perfect ads to separate yourself from the competition, which many first-time advertisers struggle with.

Additionally, many businesses that partner with Microsoft Advertising have a lower cost-per-click rate than those who go through Google Ads. While this won’t be true for everyone, some business owners save over 30% of their marketing budget when they go through Microsoft.

4. Yahoo’s Advertising Service

Yahoo claims to have roughly 625 million unique users across all its platforms, including its search engine, native email, and websites. That’s a large section of potential customers loyal to Yahoo you’ll miss out on if you only advertise on Google or Bing. Luckily, Yahoo offers an advanced but easy-to-use advertising platform for businesses to reach new demographics; Yahoo Advertising.

Yahoo built its ad network around Yahoo DSP, which helps identify potential customers and targets them directly. That way, your ads reach the right people rather than wasting away on uninterested parties. While all advertising platforms have methods to filter the right ads to the right people, Yahoo emphasizes theirs when promoting its ad service.

Additionally, Yahoo Advertising has a very user-friendly setup for tracking ad campaign data. You can use that information to see your ad’s click-through rates, conversion rates, and average cost.

5. Yahoo Native and Native Advertising

Native advertising is one of Yahoo’s biggest selling points, so much so that they have a dedicated platform for it; Yahoo Native (also called Yahoo Gemini). Native advertising is a marketing strategy where businesses create ads that look and feel natural to the platform they’re on. For example, rather than a banner ad for an unrelated business, a native ad could be something like a sponsored article on a blog or a partnered social media post that promotes a product or service.

Native advertising exists beyond Yahoo, but two key criteria set Yahoo Native apart from other platforms. For starters, Yahoo owns and operates several editorial websites, including Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Life, and others, meaning they have lots of pages with different demographics where your native ads can belong. Second of all, and arguably most importantly, Yahoo Native offers tons of different native ad formats, like search and display ads, carousel ads, and advertisements built into their email platform.

6. Advantages of Yahoo Advertising

Yahoo’s Advertising service doesn’t reach quite as many people as Microsoft’s, which doesn’t reach quite as many people as Google’s. This gives Yahoo’s ad service the same obvious disadvantage as Microsoft’s along with the same sneaky advantage; smaller platforms mean fewer advertisers and less competition for your marketing materials, along with lower CPC rates in some instances.

Yahoo also has a unique advantage in that it owns several websites and tools beyond its search engine, including an email tool, a popular finance page, a general news site, and even a fantasy football platform. Yahoo Ads make their way onto all these sites and more, and since these platforms span a range of topics, there’s a good chance your ads will show up on at least one, regardless of your business’s intended audience.

7. Similarities and Differences

Yahoo and Microsoft have pretty similar advertising platforms, but both companies hang their hats on different selling points. For example, Yahoo prides itself on placing ads on an array of sites and platforms, all owned by Yahoo and all with a combined hundreds of millions of users. Additionally, their advertising site leans into transparency and trust, promising that you will be able to view all the details of your advertising investment.

On the other hand, Microsoft Advertising sells itself on its reach and accessibility. Bing averages billions of search engine inquiries a month, its ad platform is free and doesn’t have any minimum fees per campaign, and it offers a straightforward sign-up process where even beginners can set up an ad campaign in minutes.

One key difference to keep in mind is that Bing and Yahoo cater to different audiences. While Bing’s demographic is more general and all-encompassing like Google, Yahoo’s audience skews slightly older. This is partially due to Yahoo being an older platform and maintaining a loyal fanbase through the years, but more importantly, Yahoo has a lot of native pages that appeal to an older audience. Daily updates from Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, and Yahoo Life are among the biggest appeals to Yahoo as a whole, but those pages don’t really attract younger users.

8. How Do They Compare to Google Ads?

There isn’t much difference in the types of ads you can run on Google, Bing, or Yahoo. The two most popular and effective ad formats on all platforms are search and display ads, and Microsoft and Yahoo’s answers to these types of ads are pretty much the same as they are on Google. Display ads are image-based and show up on websites, while search ads are text-based and show up in search results.

Another similarity between Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising is that display ads from both platforms only appear on sites and services partnered with the company’s ad network. For Google, it’s called the Google Display Network, while Microsoft calls their’s the Microsoft Search Network. Aside from the number of users on Google vs. Bing vs. Yahoo, there aren’t many differences between the three advertising platforms. However, there are a couple of points setting them apart.

For Microsoft Advertising, one key, unique selling point is that they let users target their ads based on what device their potential customers are using. Yahoo, on the other hand, reports a slightly higher click-through rate (CTR) than Google, which means more people click on Yahoo ads more often than Google ads on average. But aside from those factors, the differences between the ad platforms are largely negligible.

9. Yahoo and Bing’s Ad Formats

Below are a few of the most common ad formats available on Microsoft Advertising and Yahoo Advertising:

Search Ads: These ads appear as normal search results on Bing and Yahoo search with the word “ad” or “sponsored” next to them. They’re often the first results that appear on related search terms, making them a powerful tool for active advertising.
Display Ads: Display ads show up on web pages as images or graphics showcasing a product or service. Bing and Yahoo both use cookies to track web users’ data and passively promote items they might be interested in across different websites.
Video Ads: These video-format ads play before and during videos on Yahoo and Microsoft video players.

10. What To Know About Advertising On Bing and Yahoo

We want to repeat a point we’ve already mentioned a few times in this post; Bing and Yahoo are not nearly as popular as Google, and advertising on either platform means you will deliberately be marketing on stages with less traffic. But, once again, that’s not necessarily a bad thing for some businesses.

If you have the budget, we recommend running ad campaigns on Google, Bing, and Yahoo, to reach the millions to billions of users on these major search engines and platforms. However, if you’re a smaller business with a lighter budget, advertising through either Microsoft or Yahoo Advertising is a great way to separate yourself from the competitors exhausting their resources through Google Ads.

TLDR: Though Google will likely always have the best online advertising tool, Microsoft and Yahoo’s alternatives are great ways to help your business grow, and might even be more cost-effective than Google Ads.