I know competitors advertise on each other, so I am not sure why this struck me as so interesting. I guess it is because I have been having a lot of discussions lately about the value of the +1, as well as how to identify blog topics that will get visitors to a web site.
At any rate, I am watching a show on that terrible Josh Powell situation, and as is often the case, was driven to search for more information on the web. That is how I happened to run across the Bing ad, which oddly, is for Josh Powell. Clicking on the ad brings the user to another search for Josh Powell, this time conducted on Bing.
I can only assume that someone at Bing has purchased keywords for commonly searched topics and is hoping people will click on those ads when they show up during a Google search. Josh Powell, unfortunately, is a hot topic and people will be searching it for the next week or so.
The concept is pretty smart, since people are pretty likely to click on the ad for the topic they are seeking, thinking it will provide them more information. At the same time it strikes me as a bit odd, given it is Bing trying to get people who are searching a specific topic on Google to leave Google and search on Bing for the same topic. Obviously Google isn’t worried about the competition and is happy to take Bing’s money. Perhaps Bing hopes that people will think its search results are better.
