As of August 17th, US retailers who submit their product feeds to Microsoft Merchant Center to be eligible for Bing Shopping campaigns are now also eligible for Free Product Listings that will display in the Shopping tab.
Free Product Listings on Bing are currently available to those who have a Microsoft Merchant Center store with approved products – the program will continue to expand over the course of 2020 starting in the United States.
United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, and Germany are among the countries where Bing’s Free Product Listings on the Shopping tab will expand to over the coming months.
A “No Brainer” for Ecommerce Stores
Feels a bit like déjà vu amiright?
Just as we have seen at Google across over a year’s worth of announcements – ecommerce store owners and marketers now have a new opportunity in the Bing search engine to reach more shoppers with the added potential to increase sales at absolutely no cost.
Here’s a look (courtesy of Microsoft Advertising and Bing) of what Free Product Listings look like on Bing’s Shopping tab:
As of right now, Product Ads or Shopping ads are still receiving the lion’s share of the page – in fact, I was not able to produce a result on the Bing Shopping tab with these Free Product Listings, at least not yet.
This is in stark contrast to Google’s model wherein the Free Listings take up the majority of the results. But, this is only the earliest roll out so I do expect the format to evolve over time.
Still, free product listings = free traffic = PROFIT! There is absolutely no reason why eligible retailers should not be looking to Microsoft Advertising and Bing if they are not already advertising with Shopping ads.
Eligibility for Bing’s Free Product Listings
Let’s skip the fluff, here’s the basics:
- Already have approved products in Microsoft Merchant Center? All approved product offers will automatically be opted into this new offering.
- Not selling on Bing yet? Set up your Microsoft Advertising account, Merchant Center, and after your Store is approved you can submit your product feed.
Important To Note
- Reporting for Free Product Listings is said to be coming this fall
- Better (or more) data is encouraged – a best practice would be to submit all products and ensure product data is optimized
- You can easily opt-out of Free Product Listings the Settings page of your Microsoft Merchant Center Store, but why would you do that???
Our team is excited to see the evolution of this program as we have already seen the impact that Google’s version of this has had on store traffic and new sales.
Why Microsoft Advertising and Bing?
Looking at paid click data for computer or laptop shoppers (and come on, its FREE) there’s just no reason why retailers shouldn’t be jumping at the opportunity to increase traffic and sales.
As our Partner Team at Microsoft Advertising shared in our last webinar, the retail category has a substantial share of the paid clicks as compared to other verticals:
Free Product Listings stand to be able to begin capturing a chunk of that click share.
What’s more, since Microsoft Advertising is making it so much easier to get started (far easier than Google makes it) its essentially a turnkey experience for retailers.