In the aftermath of a major reporting glitch that affected the Bing Ads platform, Bing’s now welcoming customers to a new Bing Network and has rebranded itself with a new logo, together with a motto that quite simply says “Be there”. The new platform has tools for every device to manage campaigns on mobile apps, as well as Bing Shopping and Automated Rules, all designed to assist customers to a greater level.
This announcement from Bing comes fairly close on the heels of a deal that was renegotiated between Microsoft and Yahoo in April 2015, just 5 years into a 10-year arrangement Yahoo used to handle brands, premium accounts and the highest spending advertisers for both companies, but now ad sales and account management will be dealt with separately by each company. For Bing, this means autonomy over Bing staff, Bing US accounts and account management, all previously under the Yahoo umbrella. Partners including AOL, The Wall Street Journal, Infospace and Gumtree are all on board, which should lead to more searches and clicks across the board.
Despite some commonality, Yahoo and Bing have been treading different paths over recent years, with Yahoo focusing on serving search ads on its properties and developing the Gemini platform, a unified marketplace for mobile search and native advertising. Bing, on the other hand, has increased its participation across Microsoft properties such as Windows 10, Cortana, Xbox and native advertising on MSN, as well as reaching further afield to its syndication partners, covering Amazon devices, Spotlight search and Apple Siri.
Just last June, Bing launched a chart tracker to monitor weekly click volumes from Bing Ads on the Yahoo Bing network to reassure advertisers they weren’t suffering as a result of renegotiations earlier in the year. Bing now appears to have taken down this tracker, but earlier in the year it was indicating Bing Ads accounted for approximately 85% of the network’s clicks across all devices. Bing Ads still have a significant presence in Yahoo search results and Yahoo’s future’s a little unsure, pending a deal with Google to serve search ads on Yahoo.
Although Bing still needs to invest in its new platform, providing reassurance of its stability, the Bing Network is geared up for success along with its new partnerships and is destined to make an even bigger mark within the Microsoft ecosystem.
Introducing the Bing Network in his latest blog post, General Manager of Bing Ads, Stephen Sirich, said that the company had a unique ability to power the operating systems people are using every day, giving Bing the opportunity to be truly everywhere.