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Microsoft is buying a ton of TV advertising space for its Bing search engine, as you may have noticed. However, some of their ads are esoteric at one moment and overly-specific at others. Non-online marketing folks have commented to me that the following Bing ad leaves them wondering if Bing is a travel search site. (It does have a travel component, Farecast, which Microsoft bought about a year ago.)

It’s a branding challenge – does Bing have a strong enough brand with the average consumer to be discussing product benefits? I don’t think it does. View the ad below and be the judge: