Bing Ads advertisers are also advertising on Google AdWords, and as such, need to transition campaigns from one to the other. To alleviate any extra work needed to transition campaigns between the two, Bing Ads is implementing Upgraded URLs, just as Google AdWords has.
How does this affect Bing advertisers?
If you’ve already begun, or plan to move toward Upgraded URLs using Google AdWords, your mind can be put at ease knowing that Bing Ads fully intends to support the Upgraded URLs so that you, the advertiser, can manage the URLs more easily between both AdWords and Bing Ads, while avoiding the need to make adjustments for any discrepancies between the two.
With these two guidelines, Bing Ads will help guide advertisers through these changes:
- By early May of 2015, import of Upgraded URLs from AdWords will be supported.
- By the summer of 2015, Upgraded URLs will be available in Bing Ads.
Support of upgraded URLs from AdWords
Bing Ads will be implementing a series of updates relating to Upgraded URLs by as soon as the beginning of next month. The first update of the two will be for the Google Import feature used on both the Bing Ads Web UI and the Bing Ads Editor. The only advertisers affected by this change are those who utilize the import feature for AdWords campaign data, into Bing Ads. The upgrade available for advertisers using only the Bing Ads Editor will be optional.
Making the campaign import process easier
In order to construct a Destination URL that Bing Ads is able to understand, both Final and Final Mobile URLs, as well as existing AdWords tracking templates at the levels of account, campaign, entity and ad group, will be used when advertisers are importing their campaigns to the platform of Bing Ads from Google. Outlined changes in the list below will show which URLs are affected with regard to text ads, keywords, and sitelink extensions during a Google import.
Important Note: The use of custom parameters is currently unsupported by Bing Ads, and will be skipped during a Google import that references custom parameters in Final URLs, Final Mobile URLs or Tracking Templates.
Types of URLs used in text ads, keywords and sitelink extensions
- If a destination URL is set, Bing Ads will import the destination URL as is.
- If only a Final URL is set, Bing Ads will import the Final URL after reconstructing it with an inherited tracking template.
- If only a Final Mobile URL is set, Bing Ads will import the Final Mobile URL after also reconstructing it with an inherited tracking template.
- If both Final URL and Final Mobile URLs are set, Bing Ads will import the Final URL after first reconstructing it with an inherited tracking template.
Being empowered to make more educated optimizations to your campaigns is the reason for the second update in support of a subset of the new dynamic text parameters.
Bing Ads Destination URLs: Support of new dynamic text placeholders
Included in the AdWords Upgraded URLs feature are some changes that were implemented to widen support of new ValueTrack parameters. Bing Ads will now support a number of dynamic text placeholders in Destination URLs, as well as the support for the reconstruction of URL structures for those advertisers using Upgraded URLs with both tracking templates and Final URLs.
The availability of Upgraded URLs in Bing Ads is slated for the end of the summer of 2015. There will be more details and information updates in the coming months. Though the full support for dynamic text parameters that return empty values will be revealed at a later time, you can prepare to take advantage of any listed insights about your campaign. For a quick list of currently supported substitution parameters on Bing Ads, visit Dynamic Text Substitution parameters.
