Bing Ads has developed a way to define and track performance and conversions to meet ad goals. The company announced Universal Event Tracking (UET) Thursday at its Bing Ads Next event in Redmond, Wash. The focus sets the pace for a series of services around audience based remarketing that are expected to roll out in the near future.
Signals have become invaluable as search and other types of online advertising mature. UET will help advertisers understand the most effective ad campaigns based on conversion goals; keywords that lead to better conversions and lower bounce rates; return on investments for advertising dollars; highest-converting customer segments delivering the most value; and bounce rate, pages per visit, and duration per visit from keywords on the brand's Web sites.
"There's a pull across Microsoft -- from services to consumer -- to personalize experiences using Bing technology, per David Pann, GM for the search network at Microsoft, explaining how Bing and Bing ads during the past 12 month earned a lot of respect internally and among brands across the industry. "It means integrating the Bing technology across Microsoft, providing innovation, and providing differentiation. We've earned the right and respect to accomplish the tasks."
Pann told MediaPost that UET will begin with search engine marketing and expand into other media across the Web.
The tracking platform, which requires one code snippet or tag across all campaigns and accounts, replaces the Campaign Analytics conversion tracking functionality being used today. Microsoft said the conversion tracking will continue to work, but marketers will need to create new tags with the latest tool starting today. The same code, or tag, also will support the upcoming audience segments for remarketing.
The tag provides data such as bounce rate and visit duration, and has the ability to track conversions across devices, from desktop to mobile. It's not clear whether it will support the Xbox entertainment center. In the first quarter in 2015, it will support bid modifications and the ability to define and target custom audience segments assigning value, attributing conversions to keyword clicks, means following the last-click attribution model. Previous clicks during the conversion are counted as an assist to the sale or the completion of the task. UET is compatible with tag management systems from Adobe, Ensighten, Google, QuBit, Signal Digital, and Tealium.
Earlier in the day, Microsoft also released two new Android apps and an experimental Bing app for Android Wear devices. The two apps for Android smartphones are Next Lock Screen, a lock screen replacement app offers contextual information on the locked screen of your phone, and a social app called Journeys & Notes. The third project, Bing Torque, is an Android Wear app that Microsoft says allows users to twist their wrist and talk to search Bing. All three are part of the Garage Project, where employees spend time working on their own projects.
After the market stock closed Thursday, Microsoft reported fiscal Q1 2015, earnings at 54 cents per share on revenue of $23.20 billion.