Yahoo and Bing Amend Their Search Partnership: What You Need to Know

While we’ve survived the arrival of Mobilegeddon, there’s a new big change happening that will affect online advertisers: Yahoo and Microsoft are altering their strategic search alliance. While according to the Yahoo press release, this change is being made to “improve the search experience, create value for advertisers, and establish ongoing stability for partners”, it is also sure to cause a major upset in the online advertising world.

Here’s the background on this change: Previously, Bing Ads used to be the only interface through which search on Yahoo sites and Microsoft sites were being managed. Then, on February 19th, 2014, Yahoo Gemini was launched as a search marketing platform which would be a unified marketplace for mobile and native search.

Now, in April 2015, two more significant changes happened:

1. To increase the adoption rate for Yahoo Gemini, 100% of Yahoo mobile search will now be served by Yahoo Gemini. This means that no longer can you get Bing Ads on Yahoo mobile search.
2. Up to 49% of Yahoo desktop search will be shifted to the “Gemini” interface as well.

So, what are the implications of this?

1. Advertisers now have one more interface they need to master.
2. All currently running Bing Ads campaigns will have to be replicated to Yahoo Gemini if advertisers want to retain 100% of ads on Yahoo mobile search (and up to 49% of Yahoo Desktop search).
3. Reporting will prove to be a greater challenge, as we now have one more source in the mix where we need to get numbers from.
4. As of now, there is no goal value tracking in Yahoo Gemini. The revenue tracking goes for a toss.
5. Yahoo Gemini currently lacks several key ad features, such as sitelinks, call extensions, app extensions, location extensions and mobile bid modifiers. Online advertisers will have to manage their ads without them.

For more information on this change, please check out the following links:

What is Yahoo Gemini – link

Yahoo and Bing update their relationship status – link

Microsoft and Yahoo Agree to Amend Search Partnership – link

What do you think this change will mean for the online advertising landscape? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!