Microsoft has announced that it will launch a new ad campaign on UK television this week to challenge the might of Google.
The ad campaign is part of a major US$2 billion marketing push by Microsoft to promote its search engine Bing and to challenge Google's dominance of the UK market. This is likely to be quite a challenge, as Bing currently has a 3 per cent market share of the UK search engine market while Google holds a massive 90 per cent.
The three-month ad campaign will include three TV ads developed by ad agency JWT. The ads aim to show that the information overload you can get with other search engines does not occur with Bing.
Ashley Highfield, the managing director and vice-president of consumer and online business at Microsoft UK, commented: "This is a big moment – we are taking out our slingshots and taking on Goliath." He added: "People feel overawed by the internet and what they turn up when they are searching. We are also in a world where people have forgotten there is an alternative search engine."
The campaign will start this Wednesday and uses the strapline "Bing and decide."
