Whoa! Microsoft Bing, the sneaky search engine that’s just 16 months young (since its major overhaul and rebranding) just surpassed Yahoo in percent-of-US-search-share.

Obviously, everyone’s all like,

“Does this matter?”

and

“What’s next?”

and

“Remember on that one episode of Gossip Girl when Blair’s mom threw her hands up at her new husband’s ignorant question and bellowed ‘Bing it!’? Is that going to be a thing?”

But what’s perhaps more important (to someone advertising with PPC) than the infinitesimal percentage point that pushed Bing into the lead is the type of search traffic Bing gets.

Because Google owns the preponderance of search traffic, many businesses, overwhelmed by the complexity of multiple ad networks, choose to just stick with Google.

Here’s why we think this is a mistake.

Yep, you should advertise on Google. But most searchers stick to just one network (whoever these Bing people are, they’re just searching on Bing). So if you don’t put ads on Yahoo and Bing in addition to Google, there are people out there searching for your product who simply won’t find you. Combined, Bing and Yahoo now account for about 27 percent of all searches in the United States.

The demographics are different, too. Bing users tend to have more money. Don’t you want those people with more money to be able to find you?

(Note to the clever writers at Gossip Girl who obviously did their endorsement-deal homework by having the affluent fashion designer mother try to make ‘Bing it!’ happen, rather than that bedraggled, destitute Brooklynite hipster, Vanessa: GOOD WORK GUYS.)

And you can get better click prices and higher conversions. Since Trada is able to run ads through three ad networks simultaneously, our reporting system compares clicks and conversions across networks. Guess what? Bing clicks can cost half the price – and frequently beget higher conversions.

The incomparable Matthew Hessler, who is the Chuck Bass of PPC’s heart, took time from his busy schedule of land-baroning in Shetland, Scotland to discuss the Bing coup in this latest episode of MasterPPC Theatre. Bing: Is it the New Hotness?

Want more MasterPPC Theatre? Check out last week’s episode, Google Instant… Gratification? And here’s our Bing video, in which we point an arrow at a baby.

Matthew Hessler, Account Director for Trada, was kind enough to call in from his castle in Edinburgh to weigh in on the buzz surrounding Google Instant. Keep an eye out for the next installment of MasterPPC Theatre next week, when Matt tackles Bing: Is It the New Hotness?

So last week, Google released Google Instant, which is a new feature on the main Google search page. It’s essentially an amphetamine-laced predictive text. It’s neat to watch. Google says it’ll save us time, too: so we can spend less time looking FOR cute boots and more time looking AT cute boots.

Here’s how it works. You drive over to google.com and start typing in a search query. As quick as lightning, Google attempts to predict what you’re looking for – and it populates the page with results.  Each successive letter may beget a different term. The results include both organic and PPC, just like before.

But how does this affect advertisers running campaigns in AdWords?

The feature is brand new, but we can look at the way it works and come to a few conclusions:

1.  You don’t need to flip out about impressions spiking.
Google will log a Google Instant impression only if the searcher pauses for more than three seconds or clicks on an ad. The results should be minimal – and remember, your competitors are experiencing the same effects.

2.  No, you shouldn’t start buying up all the ‘incompletes’ on your keywords.
Google Instant just doesn’t work that way. Spend your energy and money on #3.

3.  You’ll want to get more competitive on head-of-tail keywords – and have a diverse strategy.
Long-tail keywords are still in play: after all, people searching for specific things will likely type in the complete phase. And don’t forget that a huge percent of Google users operate through a toolbar search box. Google Instant only applies to the google.com search homepage.

4.  You’ll be rewarded for your SEO efforts.
How does Google decide whose ads and organic listings show up for each of their predictions? It’s all based on domain authority. This doesn’t mean just the Goliaths will win. It does mean that the smaller guys need to work on their page rank (but you were all doing that anyway, right?).

We say Google Instant isn’t a game-changer – but it should be considered when working on a well-rounded web-marketing strategy.

Want more? Check out this New York Times article (where Matthew Hessler is quoted) or this great post from Eli Feldblum on TechCrunch.