In the “I Can’t Believe They’re Just Now Doing This” section of the news, Bing has announced that they will be launching Bing Shopping Campaigns Beta. I guess after seeing Google make money hand over fist on Google Shopping Ads for two years has finally convinced Microsoft that there just might be something to this whole Shopping Ad thing.
Bing is currently only allowing some advertisers to begin using the new Shopping Campaigns since it is in beta:
If you’re a managed Bing Ads customer (i.e. you have an assigned Account Manager) using Product Ads on Bing or Google Shopping Campaigns, you’re welcome to get started with Bing Shopping Campaigns right away! Simply reach out to your Account Manager and let them know you’d like to be a beta participant.
As a result, not a whole lot of specifics are known about the new campaigns, but they are likely to be very similar to Google’s Shopping Campaigns. Bing says that you’ll be able to do a bunch of standard things, like view reports, track and prioritize campaigns and the like, but the biggest takeaway is that you’ll be able to import your AdWords Shopping Campaigns into Bing’s system.
Although I think allowing people to import campaigns from AdWords is a smart move on Bing’s part, it’s something they should have done a long time ago.