Microsoft ‘Bing and decide’ TV ad campaign

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.”