Yahoo Completes Transition to Bing Search Ads in U.S.

Microsoft has announced it is now powering all aspects of Yahoo’s search operations in the U.S. and Canada, following the successful migration of paid search campaigns to its self-service adCenter platform.

As of today, advertisers can purchase ads on both Yahoo Search and Microsoft’s Bing engine through a single adCenter account, providing significant competition to Google’s dominant AdWords search advertising product. According to comScore, Yahoo and Microsoft’s combined search market share currently stands at around 28 percent, compared to Google’s 66 percent.

The announcement marks the end of a yearlong process during which Microsoft and Yahoo integrated their technologies, ad sales relationships, and even staff, following the search alliance partnership they reached back in June 2009. Following the rollout in the U.S., the companies will now turn their attention to global markets, likely starting with those in Europe.

In a blog post announcing the completed transition, David Pann, general manager of Microsoft’s Advertising Search Network said he expects costs per click to rise in the short term, as competition for ads increases as new advertisers join the marketplace. “As advertisers experiment with bidding on each keyword to determine what works best for their campaigns, we expect these prices to stabilize within weeks,” he said.

As part of the search alliance the two companies agreed premium advertiser accounts will now be managed by Yahoo staff. That transition has now also been completed, Pann said. The pair has also built out a Transition Center resource for small and medium-size advertisers, designed to help them transition their campaigns smoothly to the adCenter platform.