• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 8, 2014

Political turmoil in Russia has not stopped U.S. and European companies from running paid-search advertisements in the country on Russia's most popular search engine, Yandex. Marin Software on Monday announced that marketers can analyze, report, and automate paid-search campaign bids on Russia's largest search engine from its platform, alongside Google, Bing, Yahoo Japan, and Baidu.

Pointing to multinational companies like Symantec, Matt Ackley, CMO at Marin Software, has not seen any pullback in terms of marketers running paid-search ads on the Yandex engine. "When we talk with the multinational companies they still see Yandex as a strong viable option," he said. "It's in the back of my mind, although it hasn't come up in any of our discussions with clients."

Some 87% of consumers in Russia use search engines to research products and services, and Yandex is used by 61% of online consumers, per Marin, citing Morgan Stanley research.

Through the platform, Marin provides a view of the return on investment of paid search running on Yandex and compares it with other engines by combining impression, click, and cost data with conversion and revenue data. Determining the correct ad bids can become complex, because bidding competition and seasonal shifts require marketers to recalculate bids frequently and automatically.

Oscar Romero, head of search strategy and product at Starcom MediaVest Group, points to the ability to "fully leverage the Russian market" and incorporate client performance data as two of the benefits.

The one major difference between Google, and the Bing-Yahoo network is device targeting. Yandex does not allow device targeting. An advertiser on Yandex cannot create mobile-only or desktop-only campaigns. Ads that are in the No. 1 position on Yandex serve up on both mobile and desktops. Through the Marin platform, an advertiser can better control their bidding strategy to ensure the ads serve up in the top spot on both, but the engine doesn't run separate ads or campaigns for mobile similar to Google or Bing.

Support of Yandex within the Marin platform is available in beta, with general availability slated for September 26, 2014.