Hacker News Reader

Comment by answerly | Hacker News Reader

Bing, Yahoo, Ask and dozens or hundreds of smaller, niche search engines already spend millions of dollars per month on Google Adwords.

View on HN

How do you know that? Have any links?

Google "search engine" and you'll see ads for Bing. I don't know what their monthly spend is, but I see Bing ads all the time when searching on Google for a variety of keywords.

EDIT: Here's a chart that claims to show the top spenders on AdWords, and there aren't any search engines I can see:

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=145720

I see no Bing....but I love that adage chart. Thanks.

Btw, I don't think it makes sense for Bing to buy the keyword search engine. I can't see how that makes any sense. Unless consumers are REALLLLY dumb. Then again, I might be expecting too much.

I have seen Bing ads on other search queries...that was the one I could think of that gives me a Bing ad 100% of the time. I think it makes sense to advertise for the keyword "search engine" because you may catch people who are looking to leave Google but don't know the alternatives. Seeing a Bing ad might be what lures a loyal user. And it could be that the naive user is the one who is more likely to click on ads once there.

It presumably makes sense for Bing to buy ads on any keyword that leads to a profitable customer acquisition opportunity.

http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-spends-90965-per-day-on...

http://www.businessinsider.com/top-100-google-advertisers-by...

That second link pre-dates Bing's launch, I believe. You'll see Yahoo and Ask.com in the top 15. Much of the top 20 are product, travel or local search engines.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com