Sensis ramps up digital marketing capabilities with Bing Ads partnership

Australia’s online services business, Sensis, has become Australia’s first authorised Bing Ads reseller.

Sensis said the partnership is the latest step in its quest to leave its directory heritage behind and become a leader in delivering digital marketing services to SMBs across the country.

According to Sensis executive general manager of digital partnerships and innovation, Kelly Brough, the company will start providing Bing Ads to its ClickManager Plus customers in November.

“We view this as a big opportunity to provide quality leads to our advertisers,” she said. “Our association with Microsoft also further reinforces Sensis’ digital transformation vision allowing SMEs to maximum their reach with their customers in the most effective way via our digital channels.”

Bing is making a host of changes to its advertising platforms and capabilities this year, most notably the introduction of ads into its smart searches. This week, the company announced it is piloting massive ‘hero ads’ with a select list of brands, which will appear when users use smart search to find brand-specific information.

“The goal of Hero ads is to enable searchers to quickly find the most relevant information and complete the most popular tasks for the brand they are specifically searching for via a beautiful visual and interactive experience created in partnership with our brand partners,” Microsoft said in a blog post on 30 October.

Microsoft opened up Bing reselling opportunities worldwide in October through the Bing Ads Express beta. This automated platform allows small businesses to have a basic presence on Bing Ads, with advertisements tied to Bing Place for Business listings.

Although Google remains the dominant search engine, ComScore’s monthly Search Engine Rankings reports this year have shown Bing’s share of the core search market in the US rising. As at September 30, Bing sits in second place at 18 per cent, followed by Yahoo.

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