Microsoft’s Bing to sponsor The Simpsons on Channel 4
Microsoft is to replace the Government’s Change4Life as the new sponsor of The Simpsons show on Channel 4 week nights and Channel 4+1.
The company says it is seeking to drive Bing query share with new multi million advertising campaign that features The Simpsons on Channel 4, and will focus on the Bing search engine.
The sponsorship will include Bing sponsorship credits before and after episodes of The Simpsons, as well as during ad breaks.
Microsoft says this is a high profile sponsorship as The Simpsons celebrates its 20th anniversary this year and will last for the next three months.
The move comes just days after Microsoft launched a multi million pound advertising drive on Bing, seeking to steal share from Google and drive more searches through its engine. This also runs for three months and includes a mix of TV, rich media and online slots.
Using the tagline ‘Bing and Decide’ the ads aim to inform the public of Bing’s role in helping searchers make more informed decisions, and contrasts other search products with the simple, integrated and instantaneous answers that Bing produces. Each ad features someone suffering from ‘information overload’, with Bing offered as the cure.
Ashley Highfield, MD & VP consumer & online at Microsoft UK, says: “We’re committed to investing in search at a local level to deliver value for our advertisers. The ad campaign brings to life the concept of Bing as a decision engine, a tool that both cuts through the information overload and offers a new search experience. We’re confident that this will help grow our user base, offering advertisers an alternative search solution.”
Bing’s goal is to create a better user experience by challenging the lack of innovation in search engines for over a decade.
