Microsoft Set to Launch Campaign for Bing

According to reports by AdAge and other sources in the last few days, Microsoft is set to launch a marketing campaign for their re-branded search engine, Bing. The campaign is expected to be an $80 million to $100 million effort. Those numbers are astronomical when considering Google itself only spent around $25 million in advertising all last year. But Microsoft’s current share of the search engine pie is relatively small. So they are going to have to make a big splash to make any sort of headway against Google and Yahoo, who dominate that vast majority of internet searches.

[caption id="attachment_1851" align="alignleft" height="350" caption="Image: Zuma Press"][/caption]

 

“People with knowledge of the planned push said the ads won’t go after Google, or Yahoo for that matter, by name. Instead, they’ll focus on planting the idea that today’s search engines don’t work as well as consumers previously thought by asking them whether search (aka Google) really solves their problems,” Abbey Klaassen of AdAge reports. “That, Microsoft is hoping, will give consumers a reason to consider switching search engines, which, of course, is one of Bing’s biggest challenges.”

In the beginning Microsoft’s search was just at MSN.com, then years back it became Live Search at Live.com. In recent months, internal testing of the search product was being done as Kumo (see screenshot below) but now it seems the newly re-branded search would be dubbed “Bing.”

Bing isn’t appealing to me. I’m not sure if it reminds me of Bada Bing (the strip club on The Sopranos) or Chandler Bing (Matthew Perry’s character on Friends). Either way, I don’t think I’d make a switch from Google, unless it was head and shoulders above the rest. No screenshots from Bing as of yet, but we’ll keep you posted as things progress.

Images: James Gandolfini/Matthew Perry (Zuma Press)