If anyone asks why you don't invest more of your search budget in Bing, here are a few talking points from Microsoft's earnings call on Thursday to get the conversation going on how cloud services will best be served by Bing and Cortana.

Google and its parent company Alphabet had to launch Google Glass as an enterprise app after pulling the product from the consumer market. Alphabet has been running limited tests with a handful of companies to prove its worth, and there are numerous rivals such as Epson and Microsoft with a history of success in this space.

Google, Bing and Yahoo have been pushing more advertising spots per keyword through their platforms to meet ad delivery requests for under-served paid-search and product listing ads. Segmented search marketing teams fuel the problem, and there are measurable benefits to having the teams work together.

Google Shopping and the PLA format accounted for 51% of Google UK search ad clicks among retailers in the quarter, up from 40% a year earlier. In the U.S., PLAs generated 53% of search ad clicks for retailers, with the amount marketers spend on PLAs rising 31% year-over-year compared with 16% for text search ads.

Google claims that more than 1.5 billion AMP pages have been published and more than 100 analytics, ad tech and content management system providers support the format.

Despite struggling to keep up with new tech, marketers repeatedly test campaigns to find the media returning the highest profit on investments. When it comes to pay-per-click advertising, paid search text ads remain the best performer for marketers.

The fine was slapped on Alphabet after EU antitrust regulators ruled the company had abused its authority by promoting its shopping comparison service on its own Internet property at the top of search results. The $2.7 billion charge is not tax deductible.

The power in the data from companies like Google and Bing is that people tell search engines things they might not tell anyone else. Even if you lie to yourself, Google knows the truth by the words used to search for information and the websites people visit.

Hotels seem to be doing a better job of driving consumers directly to their websites from search engines. Of the top 10 brands, six show an increase for actual confirmed direct bookings in May 2017, compared with the year-ago month, according to a study released Tuesday.

LendingTree is stepping up its advertising and marketing efforts to take a larger chunk of the online lending market, as the business category continues to consolidate. Wilson will oversee LendingTree's brand strategy, marketing operations and consumer engagement as the company expands into new financial-service categories.