Bi(n)g Changes Ahead: Microsoft AdCenter is now bing Ads

AdCenter is dead, long live bing Ads
Together with announcing the name change for its PPC advertising platform from Microsoft AdCenter to bing Ads, Microsoft also revealed the new Yahoo! bing network yesterday (Sunday, September 9, 2012) as you can see in this blog post on their new bing ads blog and on their new Yahoo! bing network site.

A New Look Today

The first thing I noticed was the new login page when accessing our AdCenter account this morning. The URL has changed, and gone is the AdCenter logo, instead I am greeted with 2 new logos – one for bing Ads and one for the Yahoo! bing network.

At first glance, there don’t seem to be a lot of changes to the functionality on the inside, as Microsoft has already made a couple of improvements over the past few months; The most noticeable one on the front end probably being the new interface and the most important one for us as an agency being the addition of agency tools to manage client accounts.

Microsoft vs Google, the Next Round

Unbeknownst to many, and probably being overshadowed by the “bigger” consumer news about the ongoing war between Apple and Samsung, there is another war going on. And it seems that Microsoft is gearing up massively for a new battle in this war over internet search and PPC — as the above changes come only days after Microsoft’s big announcement that Amazon will be choosing bing as the default search engine on their new Kindle Fire HD tablets (Amazon’s Kindles are using Google’s Android OS).

While amazon reportedly will still allow users to switch their search preferences to Google, the move gives Microsoft instant access to an impressive chunk of the search market share.

Impact on the Advertiser

For advertisers (agencies and businesses alike) who – for a very long time – could concentrate on Google’s AdWords as their sole PPC platform (and get away with it), this means that now is the time to rethink and adjust their strategies to include bing Ads. Or they put themselves at risk of losing their connection with a big (and growing) number of search engine users.

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About the author:

Nina Khoury is a computer scientist, software engineer, data and information junkie and online marketer. She taught at various universities for more than six years and worked on projects for Fortune 500 companies including cisco, Intel and HP.

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