#InfoBites - How Ad Position can Impact Your Performance

For a successful online advertising campaign, your ads must appear in response to relevant search queries. But the placement of your ads on the results page can influence the extent of your success.

Mainline ads appear above -and often below- the organic search results (Labelled as 1-4 in the illustration below). Sidebar ads appear alongside organic search results (Labelled as 5-9).                             

To understand how your ad position can influence your success, we’ve taken a look at all ad positioning data in the UK market across PC, Tablet and Smartphones for Quarter 1 & 2 (2015) on the Bing Network.

Ads in Mainline 1 receive 67% of all clicks across all devices, while ads in Mainline 2 and 3 receive 18% and 7% respectively. Furthermore, CPC (Cost per Click) is lower in Mainline 1 (partially driven by brand names). Smartphones see an even higher click share in Mainline 1 with 77% of all clicks.  

What should your next steps be?

Get your ads serving in Mainline 1 to enjoy a higher click share and lower CPC.

How?

Since Ad Position is determined by both Bid and CTR (Click Through Rate):

1)      Ensure your bids are highly competitive – Increase the bid if necessary

2)      Ensure your keywords are highly relevant – This positively impacts CTR

3)      Download the Bing Ads Intelligence Tool (http://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/bing-ads-intelligence) and use the Auction Insights to regularly assess your performance, and that of your competitors – a change in competitors’ bidding strategy or CTR may impact your Ad Position.