Microsoft have kicked off their Bing TV campaign, and I don't get it.

Firstly, the idea of trying to differentiate Bing seems odd, given that as far as I can see there's not much differentiation (at least, not from a user perspective.)

But secondly, I don't understand the thinking behind the ads. This one, for example, shows someone asking "where can I get a greenhouse like yours", and the answer coming back as a random robotic string of vaguely related information.

Out of curiosity, I ran the search "where can I get a greenhouse like yours?" in Bing and Google. Obviously, the search is kind of meaningless- but I thought it would be interesting to see how they interpret the term and try to return something meaningful.

Google's results;

Out of 8 words, Google has clearly picked "greenhouse" as being the important one.

Bing's results;

Not one of the "above the fold" results are about greenhouses.

It seems that Bing thinks "like yours" and "where can I get" are the important parts of the search query. So their results seem much closer to the image they parody in their TV ad than their competition. Which doesn't seem like a good idea... Like I said, I don't get it.

I suppose at least the ads are relevant- even if the natural search results aren't.