Last Tuesday, Microsoft announced the launch of the Bing Network, marking the long coming end of the Yahoo Bing Network.
Despite the fact that Bing Ads continues to serve ads on a considerable percentage of Yahoo search results, Stephen Sirich, GM of Bing Ads, mentioned Yahoo just once in his post announcing the Bing Network and it substantively pertained to account management. He states that with the transition of all U.S. accounts from Yahoo to Bing, the Bing Network also represents an expanded network of partners, including AOL, Wall Street Journal and more, adding more searches to the network all the time.
The Bing Network is the result of the renegotiated search deal between Microsoft and Yahoo last April. They were only five years into the ten-year deal. Under the original deal, Yahoo’s ad sales teams handled premium accounts, meaning higher spending advertisers and brands, for both Yahoo and Bing. The new deal returns ad sales and account management back to the original company. Bing is now in control of handling Bing customers while Yahoo is in control of Yahoo customers. Bing has since bulked up its search sales force to more than 400 reps.
While Yahoo has focused on building out the capabilities of its emerging Gemini platform and serving search ads on its properties, Microsoft has been expanding Bing’s footprint across Microsoft properties, including:
- Xbox
- Cortana
- Windows 10
- Native advertising on MSN
- Syndication partners
These syndication partners include Amazon devices and Apple’s Siri and Spotlight search. Mobile was never part of the original search deal, but Yahoo went after it when Marissa Mayer joined the company as CEO.
Sirich follows up by saying that, “As a company, our unique ability to power the operating systems we use every day – from PCs, tablets and phones to consoles, cars and the Internet of Things – gives us the opportunity to put Bing truly everywhere.”
Bing has also been rebranding with a new teal logo introduced last month. Stating that it is the right time to mix things up.
Bing appears to have taken down its chart tracking weekly click volume on the Yahoo Bing network produced by Bing Ads. Bing launched the tracker last June to help ensure advertisers there were not vast volume losses happening as a result of the new deal. On the contrary, as of mid-January, it shows Bing Ads delivered roughly 85 percent of the networks clicks across all devices.
Now, with Yahoo’s course up in the air, the new search deal, and that pending deal with Google to serve search ads on Yahoo properties, Bing is setting to move forward on its own. Bing has been adding new partners and gaining a larger presence in the Microsoft ecosystem.
You can see Bing’s intelligence powering some of Microsoft’s most exciting innovations, from Cortana to voice search in Xbox One, and from the search experiences in Windows 10 to searching directly in Office, which is already on more than 200 million devices.
But Bing isn’t limited to Microsoft. Industry leaders trust their users to Bing. Whether it’s searches inside of Amazon’s devices, web results for Siri and Spotlight Search on Apple devices, or maps on thousands of leading websites, Bing’s technology is increasingly being adopted across the industry.
With the momentum of Windows 10, and the growth of their syndication business, including partners like AOL, GumTree, Wall Street Journal and Infospace, Bing is adding more searches and clicks to their network. Their syndication business continues to deliver high-quality volume, over four to five times, compared to just a year ago.
Bing will also have to continue to invest in its platform and reassure advertisers of its stability. The announcement comes shortly after a major reporting snag impacted the entire Bing Ads platform and took more than a week to fully resolve.
Bing as a company, thinks their unique ability to power the operating systems customers use every day – from PCs, tablets and phones to consoles, cars and the Internet of Things – allows the opportunity to put Bing everywhere.
