How to Run Ads Solely on DuckDuckGo [With Screenshots]

DuckDuckGo is one of the fastest-growing search engine, currently serving more than 50 million daily search queries.

DuckDuckGo is a privacy-centric search engine, promising not to use your information on their platform to serve search results and ads.

In fact, it has become the default search engine for AdBlock browser.

Those factors make DuckDuckGo the go-to search engine for the privacy-centric, tech-savvy internet users, a potentially high-value customer group for the relevant categories (e.g. VPN, security products, privacy-protection)

As DuckDuckGo has also signed on the Acceptable Ads Manifesto, it's actually possible to reach these users via DuckDuckGo even if they're using AdBlock or AdBlock Plus (which I suppose many are). This makes it one of the few websites where you can still reach ad blockers.

If you're intending to reach the aforementioned users, DuckDuckGo must be part of your marketing plan. In this post, we'll go through the ways to run ads solely on DuckDuckGo.

 

Setting Up the Campaign

For those who don't know, DuckDuckGo uses the Microsoft Ads Inventory (aka Bing Ads) to run their ads. This means the algorithm on which ad to serve is controlled by Bing, though the exception is DuckDuckGo does not include user information into that algorithm.

Firstly, go register an ad account with Microsoft Ads.

As ad platform interface changes all the time, I suggest you refer to Microsoft's guide on Bing Ads rather than describing the steps here that could be irrelevant in a few months.

Let me highlight here the specific things you need to do apart from the general set up that will enable your ads to run solely on DuckDuckGo.

 

Setting the Right Distribution

Once you've completed the setup (campaign, ad group & ads), go ahead and select an Ad Group to start. Whichever one you want to run ads on DuckDuckGo only.

Then, go to Settings and expand the selection for Advanced ad group settings.

Next, click on Ad Distribution and select the one mentioning "search partners only". Click Save at the bottom of the page

If you want to do this in bulk across multiple ad groups, you can access this option via Microsoft Advertising Editor as well.

Select the ad groups you want to edit, and make the changes under Network Distribution and select the same option.

Excluding All the Others

This setting alone doesn't mean you'll run on DuckDuckGo only. You'll run on all search partner websites which includes Gumtree, Bloomberg, CNet, Ecosia (another cool search engine) and Ask.com.

As there is no specific setting to target a site specifically (as it's probably not profitable for Bing that way), you'll have to gradually exclude certain sites until you run ads (mostly) on DuckDuckGo only.

With enough effort, you'll reach the stage where you only run on DuckDuckGo. However, this has to be done regularly as there is always new websites/platforms that become Bing's search partner.

So let the ad run for a day, and check back in on the Microsoft Ads platform. Select the campaign/ad group and go to Dimensions.

Then select Show: Publisher Website. Sort by Impressions descending. You can also do this on an account-level by not selecting any campaigns

Download the report and copy all the website URL except the DuckDuckGo one. Next, go to the campaign's setting.

Under Advanced campaign settings, find Exclusions and click on Website. Paste your URLs there.

Remember to click Save at the bottom of the page.

Again, you can also do this in bulk on Microsoft Advertising Editor. Go to Campaigns and bulk-select the campaigns you want to edit. Right-click and click Properties.

Click on Exclusions and paste the websites in or you can add one-by-one.

Do It Consistently

Moving forward, you'll need to do it consistently, preferably starting from daily then moving to weekly then monthly.

Eventually, you'll only serve ads to DuckDuckGo.

As a gift for you reading this post all the way to here, here's the list of websites that were found in this example plus some extra ones for you to start. As the keywords you use are different from mine, 

allresultsweb.com
info.com
www.fastquicksearch.com
www.historyhide.com
www.learnnow.com
www.pricesnow.com
www.tellmewhy.com
zapmeta.com
ask.com
www.ezbuying.com
wow.com
ecosia.org
outlook.live.com
definition.org
investing.com
moneywise.com
www.findsimilar.com

Final Few Things to Note

Before recommending this as a solution to your client/boss, take note of the following:

1. Pay close attention to your messaging: Users of DuckDuckGo are wary towards ads especially those that seems to be intruding on their privacy, so try not to sound too ad-like nor sound too "personalised" ("Hey you!" kind of ad). They don't hate ads, just the intrusive ads that spoil the web experience. Just spill facts.
2. There won't be as much inventory: Don't compare the amount you'll spend here with Google. Apart from the fact that there are not as many users and searches, there's also less competition meaning lower CPC. The latter could actually be a good thing.
3. Remember to implement UTM if you're tracking via Google Analytics: As this is Microsoft's ecosystem, their auto-tagging doesn't pass any keyword, campaign or ad group information to Google Analytics. Luckily, Microsoft has plenty of ValueTrack parameters you can use, even more than Google Ads.
4. Microsoft Ads has better Customer Support than Google Ads: Not really a thing to note, but perhaps something to keep in mind if you faced any roadblock with the platform. I've solved almost 100% of my problems/questions with Microsoft Ads in less than an hour via their Live Chat (even during COVID-19), while that number is closer to 0% with Google.
5. Search Partner ads are not affected by LinkedIn audience's bid adjustment: If you're not aware of this yet, Microsoft has a beta function that allows advertisers to apply bid adjustments based on LinkedIn's segments (e.g. Industry, Job Functions, Companies). This, however, only applies to owned networks (Bing, Yahoo & AOL) and not Search partners.