It’s well-understood, I guess, that Google tracks and filter-bubbles those who search with it. And Microsoft is, well, it’s Microsoft, no reason to suppose they’re not tracking and bubbling users also. Fortunately, there are alternatives:
Great options for search! So what if I want to advertise? And suppose that the people I want to reach are the kind of people who would prefer these privacy-facilitating search options? They’re profit-seeking companies and they carry ads. Can I buy ads on them?
Not really. It turns out that Startpage has an arrangement with Google, so I would need to buy Google Adwords and hope, maybe, that they’ll end up on Startpage. With Duck, the arrangement is with the “Yahoo-Microsoft Search Alliance” and seems otherwise similar.
This may be the best way for a small company to get a tiny piece of the search pie, but depending on your competitor doesn’t seem like a great long-term strategy. Maybe they have other plans. But for now, there seems to be no way for an advertiser to reach privacy-minded users, except by taking advantage of the tracking that the dominant search companies do.