iSpionage vs. Microsoft Advertising

iSpionage is ideal for when you want to get a feel for the competitor landscape for a potential client. You can just pop in, throw in the URL, and see which competitors populate, then look at the average spend. I wish I could look back at like yearly average spend, easier (default on last 1 month). But it's great to get quick glimpses and build some quick talking points around that. I don't think it's all that good for organic keyword analysis. I find the organic interface a bit clunky, with lots of information that I don't feel is all that relevant. Stick with paid search insights.

Incentivized

Despite using our account for advertising with every other social media company, Microsoft flagged ours as fraudulent. After dealing with them for weeks, we finally got to a manager, who said that they didn’t know anything, couldn’t provide any information, and was unable to do anything about it. It seems odd, but it would flagger account every time we try to upload the campaigns from Google directly into their ad manager. I would suggest if you try and use their platform, don’t tell them you’re using Google cause they seem to have a thing against it. Once your account is flagged, they have no reasonable way of resolving it, nor they are able to offer any support. You’re better off to just try a different way. Ultimately, just don’t use Microsoft advertising if you can possibly avoid it. Hopefully soon DuckDuckGo will have their own advertising platform and we can eliminate Microsoft given the terrible time we have working with this one of many, social media platforms.

• Keyword alerts notifications.
• Competitors analysis.
• Website monitoring.

Incentivized

• Familiar interface, offers editor for bulk changes, adding negative keywords is much easier than in Google Ads
• Nice reporting tools within the interface, detailed reports can be made fairly easily
• Had very nice tools to help import/export ads directly from Google Ads, which saves a ton of time

Incentivized

• Keyword database is limited compared to other tools
• Limited (though streamlined) feature set
• Less agency-friendly than other tools.

Incentivized

• Bing's ad platform could definitely use some improvements - it hasn't been updated in a long time, and it feels very outdated.
• We feel that the optimization algorithms don't always perform as well for Bing Ads as they do in Google Ads (optimize for conversions, etc.).
• It would be great to have even more integrations with LinkedIn audience targeting offered - right now, you can just make some bid optimizations in a couple of areas; we'd really like to get more robust options there, and maybe even things like cross-platform tracking.

Incentivized

We have had good success with it over all of our clients. We continually recommend bing to reach "the rest of the searchers".

Incentivized

Usability itself is all right, I just wish it looked better.

Incentivized

Our Bing Ads reps are very good and attentive. They've offered good recommendations and are quick to resolve unexpected issues and problems. Occasionally they have roped in technical support folks that have been friendly and helpful too. The general helpline for Bing Ads is also very good, especially when compared to Google's customer support.

Incentivized

iSpionage is nowhere near Semrush (and to a lesser extent SpyFu) in terms of usefulness for competitive intelligence, keyword research, or strategic planning. It has nowhere near the depth of data or level of tools available in other tools.

Incentivized

Obviously Google is a huge competitor. Typically Google is top of the game for many advertising solutions including search. Microsoft ads has a lower scale and reach compared to Google. However, Microsoft ads audience does not overlap much with Googles, providing incremental reach. Although Microsoft ads lags a bit behind in adapting the new updates that Google comes out with, their customer service is very good and they are likely to go out of their way to adapt their platform to your needs whereas their competitor does not

Incentivized

• It's hard to quantify, but I believe I've saved quite a bit of time and energy in competitor research due to iSpionage
• iSpionage has helped me get more knowledgeable, quicker, to gain trust with potential clients—again, not really measurable
• I've surely maximized my clients' advantage by recommending proper competitive spend based on what I'm seeing in iSpionage

Incentivized

• We've had a very hard time spending our budgets on Bing which has caused us a lot of extra work on our end. We've essentially had to move that money back to Google or other platforms.
• It does have an easy import from Google so you're not doubling efforts.
• The CPCs tend to be less expensive than Google - which is always good for business owners.

Incentivized