Google & Bing Gear Up for the Holidays

by: iCopywriter Senior Blogger, Gaia Veenis

Search engine companies, just like any other product or service provider, tend to put some extra effort toward advertising and branding during the holidays. This year, Bing will release a holiday ad campaign that the search engine hopes will help it catch up with the competition. Google is the online search king, capturing a whopping two thirds of the market, but Microsoft’s newly designed search engine, Bing, is making every effort to chip away at that lion’s share. While other search engines, such as Yahoo! and Ask.com, aren’t putting much effort toward luring users away from Google, Bing is really pulling out all the stops this holiday season.

Bing Makes an Expensive Advertising Move  

If you recall the classic animated version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which has been airing on network television every holiday season since 1964, then you should be familiar with Microsoft’s new ad campaign for Bing. Rudolph and the rest of the gang from the original TV special will star in the ads, an expensive move on Microsoft’s part, considering the typical cost of licensing rights. The team at Microsoft had to convince the family that owns the rights to these 47-year-old characters that Bing would add an appealing new chapter to the classic story of Rudolph, as depicted in the original special. The holiday advertisements will be airing on television and online.   

Google Stands Its Advertising Ground

There’s little chance that Google will be giving up too much of its market share any time soon, even if Bing’s nostalgic advertising campaign shakes things up a bit. Google's powerful ads air year-round, showing the search engine at work, then simply flashing the Google Chrome logo. Unlike Microsoft, Google doesn’t have much experience with TV ads and other forms of traditional advertising. Co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page purposefully avoided such marketing campaigns until the 2010 Super Bowl, when the company begrudgingly entered the television commercial market under CEO Eric Schmidt. But having spent nearly $6 million more on advertising so far this year than last year, it seems that Google has quickly fallen in love with advertising.    

So the question remains – will Rudolph win? According to the beloved children’s tale, Rudolph was a reindeer who made miracles happen. Bing could use a miracle to capture some of the market share from Google, but it’s still unclear how much the Rudolph-themed ads will help.

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