Microsoft announced that Bing Ads is now testing social extensions in the U.S. These are a new type of ad extension that advertisers can place under their copy to direct potential customers to their social accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and/or Tumblr. These can go to accounts or specific social posts.

“Businesses today spend a lot of time and resources to engage customers on social media and use paid search to drive traffic. Bing Ads team believes it’s time to build a bridge between two,” says Bing Ads Platform program manager Aurea Astro. “We believe driving potential customers to your presence on social networks to join a conversation will allow you to engage customers more directly. Brand marketers can push engagement levels using traffic coming from search to social. Customer Relationship Managers who want to push customers to social for help and/or info especially in “real time” scenarios can do so easily.”

“Using social extensions in combination with other ad extensions can symbiotically increase both your ad’s CTR and your customer engagement,” Astro adds.

Google used to have social extensions, but these simply showed Google+ follower counts. The company announced that these would be discontinued just in December.

Given that Google+ obviously didn’t catch on as Google hoped that it would, it’s no surprise to see this feature go away from AdWords. Bing’s version of Social Extensions, however, makes a lot more sense given that many more people actually use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr.

Images via Bing