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Tell us why you think Bing is as good as Google.
Bing had my site indexed 4 days before google, and updates it more regularly! That's about all I can think of
Perhaps it's because there are trivial results (see the "old" ad)? The old one has results for atlas sound and acrylic adhesive.
I don't know why this point stood out to me - are there any other changes I didn't notice? http://www.hulu.com/adzone/watch#50032769
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And how would they be able to distinguish between a sale due to an ad and one that's not? Or are you merely saying that "these companies" (like CareerBuilder? or do you just mean Coke, Bud Light, and Doritos?) have so much revenue that merely Super Bowl Sunday pays for the ads?
Well, they have sales data from before the ad ran, and then they get sales data from after the ad ran. It's not a perfectly controlled experiment, but if the ad has an impact (or doesn't) they'll be able to tell.
Probably the least expensive super bowl ad too, fyi
Great commercial, but the main message for me is that the Bing team has been doing something right. The quality of other search engines has caught up to the point where brand is an important factor in the fight for search market share. Google's product is no longer clearly better than the alternatives. Notice how most of the rest of the commercials on are for things like snack food, beer and cars where the image and…
Judging based on the ads, I wouldn't agree. Bing's TV spots fall into two groups:
1. A litany of random obnoxiousness followed by some dude saying "BING". We don't see someone getting better results from Bing, we just see someone obnoxiously spouting crap and then associate that with the brand. Whoops.
2. People trying to answer a question, getting stressed and trying out Bing. Where... well, they don't actually search. They just stare at a background image of a Japanese garden or something, and we're apparently supposed to assume that this makes everything better. Again we don't see how Bing's search results are of benefit to a user, and the message here seems to be that Bing is all style and no substance.
Contrast with Google's Super Bowl spot: it consists entirely of showing someone using Google, and presents a coherent narrative of how Google search results are having a positive effect on the user's (off-screen) life. Best of all, the narrative it presents is a cute love story.
This is sort of like the contrast between the "iDon't" spots and Apple's own iPhone ads; the Droid spots all focused on bashing the iPhone to the exclusion of showing what was good about the Droid, while the iPhone spots just... showed how useful an iPhone is.
Great commercial, but the main message for me is that the Bing team has been doing something right. The quality of other search engines has caught up to the point where brand is an important factor in the fight for search market share. Google's product is no longer clearly better than the alternatives. Notice how most of the rest of the commercials on are for things like snack food, beer and cars where the image and…
...have you ever seen a Google ad? Something is going on here.
Admittedly, Google is an extreme case. It's very easy for people to switch to a new search engine. It costs little effort and no money to try a new one, and it's easy to see if the results are better. And so Google doesn't have to advertise. In a business like theirs, being the best is enough.
Now we are seeing Google ads. So I guess Google is starting to get worried about competition, and the ease of switching search engines.
A minor observation, but I appreciate how they show the user highlighting text in one of their search results for truffles. Having done some usability work and watched users work on their computers, highlighting what is being read is such a common behavior, it's cool to see Google so in touch.
Do users still highlight when using a trackpad instead of a mouse?
Side note: Any website that uses a double click on a word to launch a webpage defining the word or a search of their website with that word is EVIL and needs to be wiped off the face of the internet permanently. New York Times, I'm looking at you. (Besides, on a Mac I can right click and choose Look Up in Dictionary or Search in Google)
I was surprised the ad didn't end with the person clicking on "I'm feeling lucky".
Compare to recent ads by Yahoo and Microsoft: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqbaZcX67L0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl2OXiX5esE
The ad by Yahoo is particularly poor, but they both make the same mistake - lots going on, but very little content. They're dancing around the subject, almost as if they're ashamed to talk about their product. Lots of glittering generalities, but no specifics. The ads could be for any old crap. They are the crudest of branding exercises - show vaguely positive images and slap your name on them.
The Google ad takes a simple narrative and uses it to show you their product and what it can do for you. They don't talk about wonder and joy and 'bringing people together', they just get on with making it happen. Google say "This is our product. We think it is magical and wonderful and profound. We credit you with the intelligence to come to your own conclusions.".
Google know that their product is so powerful and elegant that it needs no explaining. They understand the implications of their technology on a deep and fundamental level. They can talk about search so beautifully as to make people cry. That is as great a commercial advantage as I can possibly imagine.