In an interesting move, Microsoft’s search engine Bing is going to stop displaying phone numbers in plain text. This is an update to their editorial policy, and will affect all advertisements run on the search engine. In the past, marketers could place these numbers in the title’s or body of the ads so users could easily see them and make the phone call. Starting as early as next month, all new ads will no longer have this option.
Any current campaigns that are running will be able to retain the plain text numbers until June.
The move seems to be an effort to drive higher clicks on the ads, which of course will increase revenue. This is done by requiring marketers to make any phone numbers in their ads to be clickable. When a user clicks the phone number, it can call them using Skype or any VoIP platform on their computer. Of course, the click will also register with the Bing advertising platform so that they make money from it.
Bing is offering a few options for those who want to keep the phone numbers in the ads, including the clickable numbers and using their Call Extensions feature.
The update will only be impacting marketers in the US, UK, Hong Kong and Taiwan at this point, but it is likely that it will roll out globally in the future.
