Bing’s arrived and Yahoo! hasn’t left

Bing Ads have finally launched in Australia, only four years after the deal between the two search engines started the process that would stop one of them from being an actual search engine. It only took another two years after this deal before Yahoo! stopped being an actual search engine in the US, and since then this process continue around the world.

Except for in Australia. Despite repeated rumors and the occasional email from Yahoo!7 Yahoo! Search Marketing managed to hang on in Australia. One issue that may have delayed this in Australia was that Microsoft Ad Center (later Bing Ad Center) never opperated locally. Locally Yahoo! Search Marketing provided Live’s, and later Bing’s paid search advertising. Another possible problem was the cosy relationship between NineMSN and Yahoo!7.

Bing Ads in Australia

The first real announcement about Bing Ads coming to Australia appeared on the Bing Ads blog on the 2nd of April. Not the 1st, fortunately. In the post they named Mi9 as their local partner for providing search advertising. Unsurprisingly there was no news from Yahoo!. What was unexpected, given the deal that was struck in 2009 and what was seen elsewhere is that both Yahoo! Search Marketing and Bing Ad Center will remain seperate for now.

Unfortunately this means that Australian search marketers will still need to interact with Yahoo! Search Marketing’s venerable interface and optimisation tools for a little longer. It also seems that this will split what little share of search both search engines have between two platforms.

At Least it’s Different

Bing Ad Center provides a far better interface than Yahoo! Search Marketing. When comparing a platform that has remained untouched for at least four years to one with active development, this should be no surprise. However not much will change. Google will remain the dominant search engine, both in volume of searchers and share of paid search budgets.