Bing to begin TV advertising push

Microsoft is to launch its first UK television advertising campaign for its search engine Bing, five months after it took the search engine out of beta mode.

The campaign to promote Bing will begin with a series of TV ads this week, created by JWT. It will be the first time Bing has used TV in the UK as part of its agressive push to steal share from Google.

The campaign will run for three-months and will include three TV ads created by the agency JWT. The ads will break on Wednesday and use the strapline “Bing and decide”. Media planning and buying is by Universal McCann.

The ads aim to show that Bing simplifies the “information overload” that accompanies the results of many searches.

The ads will be similar to the Windows 7 ads, featuring ordinary people asking for information and receiving nonsensical, “speaking-in-tongues” answers; one early spot has a woman seeking directions to Euston station.

The TV campaign will run solidly for a month and then in two-week bursts until mid-June. It will be backed by a digital campaign across Microsoft’s network and on media including social networking websites.

Microsoft gave its Bing search engine a full UK launch in November as it looks to usurp Yahoo! as the main search rival to Google.

It aims to position itself as a challenger brand and has been running TV ads in the US for some time now.

Microsoft wants Bing to offer more organised search results through features such as categorised search, more relevant localised results and a “richer” aesthetic look including images on the home page and facts, quotes and information relevant to the UK. It is due to merge with Yahoo! next year.

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.”