A few months ago we reported how it was nearly impossible for a trained SEM to spot the ad label on these Microsoft Advertising search ads on Bing Search. Well, now, Bing is testing not showing an ad label at all on these ads in Bing Search.

Frank Sandtmann stumbled on these Bing search ads that are unlabeled and posted a screenshot on Mastoton. I tried numerous browsers and was finally able to trigger it on Microsoft Edge in a private window on Windows. Here is my screenshot:

There is no ad label on this specific ad but there is that “ads related to” section, but the ads under have no ad label on them.

This was what we saw a few months ago, where the ad label was hidden at the end of the ad text:

And here is where the normal ad label is found, at the beginning of the ad text:

Common Microsoft – you can do better.

Frank wrote, “And Bing is doing it again: ads are displayed without proper labeling. I’m pretty sure the average user doesn’t understand that the first organic result on this SERP is only at the bottom (with the “Verified” badge). Pretty shady tactics.”

Forum discussion at Mastoton.