I noticed a test that Bing Ads is currently running in the Bing Search results that highlights the fact the sponsored ads are in fact advertisements, but while removing the background that many associate with sponsored search results.

The end result is an ad which doesn’t really appear to be an ad.  This makes the sponsored results almost indistinguishable from the regular organic search results on first glance… especially for those who are accustomed to seeing the shaded background on the Bing Ads results on the page.

Normally, Bing Ads displays their ads on top of the search results with “Ads related to <keyword>” and a grey background to the ads.

The ads in the sidebar continue to show the usual grey background with the “Ads” tag at the top.

This is closer to how Google tags their ads in search results without a background and an ad tag inline with the URL of the ad, although Google uses a more eye-catching Yellow presentation of their own Ads tag.

This appears to be a very limited test.  It only showed up in a single browser session for me (not even in additional tabs in the same browser) and eventually reverted to the usual Bing Ads style we are accustomed to.

Here is an example with 4 ads at the top of the search results.

And a couple more for various search queries.

I suspect that it will perform better with the background removed, but will people notice the grey “ads” tag that differentiate them as advertisements from the organic search results?  When you see the Bing Ads next to the organic search results, it is very difficult to tell the difference.

Will we see more of this ad style in Bing search results?  Perhaps, as we know they would have been monitoring CTR performance on this style versus the usual style.  But it does appear to be an extremely small test at this time.