Back in July, the Chitika research team looked at how often Bing users clicked on ads when compared to Google and Yahoo! users. Bing users showed a 50% higher ad click rate than Googlers, so at the time our preliminary conclusion was that Bing’s success was being driven in a big part by Microsoft’s huge, expensive advertising blitz.
Now that December is upon us, and Bing keeps showing its ability to push Google from a technology standpoint, they decided to revisit and see how the numbers were looking. As it turns out, Bing users are still clicking on ads at a prodigious rate – in fact, the CTR of users who come to the Chitika network via Bing is over 75% higher than those who come from Google.
Now, it must be mentioned that Bing is still a distant third place in terms of traffic sent – Google dominates with 84% of search traffic, followed by Yahoo! at 7.40%, and Bing holding at 5.75% (AOL and Ask both have just over 1% of search traffic coming into the Chitika network). However, all things being considered the same, driving one Bing user (or AOL or Ask user) to your site can be more valuable than driving one Google user.
The Raw Numbers:
| Search Engine | Ad Clicks | Impressions | Ad CTR | % of Search | CTR Vs. Google |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AOL | 42,597 | 1,706,858 | 2.50% | 1.27% | 253.56% |
| Ask | 34,437 | 1,958,490 | 1.76% | 1.45% | 178.65% |
| Bing | 134,536 | 7,741,724 | 1.74% | 5.75% | 176.57% |
| 1,115,452 | 113,332,938 | 0.98% | 84.13% | 100% | |
| Yahoo! | 136,506 | 9,972,035 | 1.37% | 7.40% | 139.08% |
Numbers are based on a sample of traffic from the Chitika advertising network.
