Bing Ads Launches Close Variants for Broad Match Modifiers

Bing Ads says it is launching close variants for broad match modifiers in the U.S. market to help advertisers maximize the impressions relevant to their modifiers.

In other words, Bing says ads will now also be displayed when users have queries with minor grammatical variations of modifiers, such as plurals, abbreviations, acronyms, spacing, misspellings, accents, punctuation, and equivalent expressions.

A blog post announcing the change includes the following image with examples:

“We are confident that this feature will help to drive more highly qualified click volume to your campaigns,” writes Microsoft group program manager Matt Bisson in the post. “In testing, we have seen some promising results, with click-through rates increasing on average 3 percent [per internal Microsoft data] for ads using broad match modifier with close variants applied, at no impact to average cost-per-click.”

According to Bing, broad match modifier is a feature that helps advertisers narrow down broad match to ensure they can better control the intent of the users seeing the ads, but still benefit from the additional volume that broad match offers. However, to date, Bing says advertisers may have been missing out on keywords with the very intent they are looking for because they are misspelled, abbreviated, or written using different grammar.

Bing Ads also recently announced it would test the inclusion of close variants in exact match in the U.S. for a portion of queries, including “minor grammatical variations,” such as plurals, abbreviations, acronyms, spacing, and misspellings.

The post announcing broad match modifiers says close variants for exact match for international markets is in the testing stage.