Yesterday was the first day of the Hero Conf London and was a wealth of industry views and commentary delivered to this audience of avid SEM experts and search wizards in over 20 different sessions - and some serious super hero fun too …
As well as driving buzz around the event, the Bing Ads team also shared some intriguing perspective on how we should be thinking about search and what it offers people. Tor Crockatt, EMEA Regional Director, Bing Ads, took to the stage to deliver the closing keynote of the day entitled, ‘From Searches to Searchers’.
The three key takeaways for those of you who were not in the audience:
1. The keyword is not dead, it just has more friends. Today search is not only about understanding query entries but more and more about understanding the behavior of the people using the network. The key to success in the future will be leveraging signals through targeting dimensions such as geography, device, time and correctly interpreting intent to drive efficient engagement. From searches to searchers.
2. Search understands billions of people, places and things. The days of the semantic web, through the social explosion, proliferation of devices leading to connected mobility, a connected IoT world and rich data generated by all of these interactions has led to the Bing search intelligence of today: invisible computing that delivers experiences that adapt to the individual and their context. Bing manages more data in 1 day today, than the entire of the internet did pre- 1997.
3. Search advertising needs to deliver the right message at the right time to be of value. Bing Ads Native offering (in beta in the US) is a unique advertising offering built on the Bing Ads stack, leveraging the power of paid search, such as ad performance, search history and remarketing. It dynamically uses your assets in Bing Ads (including the soon to be released image ads) so can seamlessly be launched from your existing Bing Ads campaigns and offers search style controls such as bid modifiers and dedicated reporting. This will be a powerful new advertising opportunity that allows marketers to drive new audiences and engagement.
And, yes, I realise this is a fourth one, but some interesting insight below for marketers on the ‘IRON-y’ behind demographic differences in search patterns. Refining query understanding (in this case top expansions of the word 'iron') using gender data (in this case through Bing Ads Intelligence) shows clear differences in intent which the savvy marketer can harness to hone in on performance by leveraging demographic targeting.