• About Us
  • Contributors
  • Guides
  • Speaking Engagements
  • Write for The SEM Post
  • Submit a tip or contact us!
  • Newsletters

The SEM Post

Latest News About SEO, SEM, PPC & Search Engines

  • Google
  • SEO
  • Mobile
  • Local
  • Bing
  • Pay Per Click
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • State of the Industry
You are here: Home / Bing / Bing Ads Testing Category, Brand Product Names & Features Line with Smart Annotations

Bing Ads Testing Category, Brand Product Names & Features Line with Smart Annotations

November 12, 2014 at 4:30 am PST By Jennifer Slegg

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Evernote
  • SMS

Bing Ads is testing a new feature in ads that appear above the Bing search results, displaying related categories for the ad.  These are officially called “Smart Annotations”.

The category listings appear between the single line of ad text and the site links.  The categories cannot be clicked on, and seem to be there for reference purposes only.  They are only available in the US at this time with select advertisers, currently on desktop but expanding to tablet and mobile at a later date.

They seem to be having an impact, as Bing Ads advertisers are seeing a 15% lift in clickthrough rates in ads that display these Smart Annotations compared to those without.

Bing’s Smart Annotations are not just limited to categories, but can also show up for specific product features or brands carried.  Here is an example of categories:

bing-ads-category

With these flight related categories, but you can see from the screenshot that they don’t seem to be set up with the same categories.  One says “flights” while the other says “air” for categories.  Likewise, one ad shows plurals of the categories while the other ad shows the singular of the keywords.

Bing Ads matches these Smart Annotations by scanning the ad’s landing page to see if it contains keywords of applicable product categories features and landing page titles that match what the user’s search terms are.  If there is a match, Bing might pull some of these to show within the ad, and are displayed based on the order the names, products or keywords are found on the landing page itself.

Here is an example of the ads with brand lines that a company carries being displayed.bingads categories 2

They also appear in the right sidebar of the search results, which is unusual for many annotations with both Bing and AdWords.

bingads categories 4

Smart Annotations are similar to AdWords Smart Annotations.

There seems to be a limited number of advertisers with smart annotations enabled at this time, as I couldn’t get it to appear for many search terms, and a reload of the same search term didn’t always display the ads.  If you are interested, be sure to hit up your Bing Ads reps, especially with that nice 15% lift they are reporting.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Evernote
  • SMS
The following two tabs change content below.
  • Bio
  • Latest Posts
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profile

Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profile

Latest posts by Jennifer Slegg (see all)

  • 2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates - August 1, 2022
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update - October 19, 2021
  • Rethinking Affiliate Sites With Google’s Product Review Update - April 23, 2021
  • New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met - October 16, 2020
  • Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters - October 6, 2020

Filed Under: Bing, Pay Per Click Tagged With: Bing Ads, Smart Annotations

Sign up for our newsletter


Trackbacks

  1. Bing Ads Testing Green Ad Backgrounds in Top & Bottom Ads in Search Results - The SEM Post says:
    November 26, 2014 at 8:01 am

    […] last few months. Other tests include Twitter account follower numbers, how many visits a site has, categories, and consumer […]

  2. Bing Ads Testing Huge 11 Line Ad Units in Bing Search with 7 Annotations - The SEM Post says:
    March 27, 2015 at 4:13 am

    […] the same time – 8 in total.  On top of the usual site links, they also had consumer reviews, smart annotations, consumer ratings, Twitter annotations, location annotations, and top ad […]

Founder & Editor

Jennifer Slegg (2052)

Sign up for our daily news recap & weekly newsletter.


Follow us online

  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Linkedin
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Latest News

2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates

We finally have the first Google Quality Rater Guidelines update of 2022, and like usual, it is … [Read More...]

Recent Posts

  • 2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update
  • Rethinking Affiliate Sites With Google’s Product Review Update
  • New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met
  • Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters
  • Analyzing “How Google Search Works” Changes from Google
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines Update: New Introduction, Rater Bias & Political Affiliations
  • Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines: Reputation for News Sites; Video Content Updates; Quality for Information Sites
  • Google Makes Major Changes to NoFollow, Adds Sponsored & UGC Tags
  • Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines Targeting E-A-T, Page Quality & Interstitials

Categories

  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Amazon
  • Apple
  • Bing
  • Branding
  • Browsers
  • Chrome
  • Content Marketing
  • Design
  • Domains
  • DuckDuckGo
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Firefox
  • Foursquare
  • Google
    • Analytics
    • Google RankBrain
    • Quality Rater's Guidelines
  • History of Search
  • Industry Spotlight
  • Instagram
  • Internet Explorer
  • Links
  • Local
  • Mobile
  • Native Advertising
  • Other Search Engines
  • Pay Per Click
  • Pinterest
  • Publishers
  • Security
  • SEO
  • Snapchat
  • Social Media
  • State of the Industry
  • The SEM Post
  • Tools
  • Twitter
  • Uncategorized
  • User Experience
  • Video Marketing
  • Week in Review
  • Whitepapers
  • Wordpress
  • Yahoo
  • Yelp
  • YouTube
August 2022
MTWTFSS
« Oct  
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
293031 

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2022 · News Pro Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in