Bing isn’t just coming for Google’s search users — it wants to steal its advertisers too. And search advertising is such a lucrative section of the roughly $500 billion digital ad market that it almost doesn’t matter if Microsoft barely dents Google’s dominance. Even growing its share of search users by a couple of percentage points could grow its revenue by billions of dollars.
“For every 1 point of share gain in the search advertising market, it’s a $2 billion revenue opportunity for our advertising business,” said Philippe Ockenden, Microsoft’s CVP of finance, on a call with analysts Tuesday.
Bing is already the biggest part of Microsoft’s advertising business, which also includes Xbox, MSN, its adtech business Xandr, and a recent deal to sell Netflix’s ads. Microsoft said on the call that its advertising division generated $18 billion in revenue in the last 12 months and that…
