In a new move demonstrating its international presence, the Russian search giant Yandex announced on Monday that it has opened a sales office in Lucerne, Switzerland. The new office is headed by Bernard Lukey, a Swiss citizen and the former CEO of Ozon.ru, one of Russia’s largest online stores.
The Lucerne sales office was opened to work more efficiently with advertising clients in Europe by presenting Yandex and its products to customers “and training them on how to maximize their advertising opportunities on Yandex,” the company’s press release reads.
Yandex offers a wide range of contextual and display advertising opportunities to target Internet users in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, be it on its own websites or across its advertising network.
The press release notably does not mention Yandex’s non-Russian versions, which include English and Turkish, in particular. This may be a sign of insufficient traction gained by these versions, which were launched in relatively recently.
Foreign advertisers can manage their contextual campaigns via Yandex.Direct, Yandex’s proprietary auction-based ad-serving system, available both in Russian and English. In January 2012, according to ComScore, Yandex.Direct served over 21 million users per day.
Yandex continued to dominate the Russian online advertising market in 2011 with its advertising revenues reaching 20.03 billion rubles, approximately $667 million. This accounted for almost one half of the total online advertising spending in the country. The search giant’s contextual advertising activity covered two thirds of the market, generating 17.5 billion rubles, approximately $584 million.
The Lucerne office is Yandex’s second office in Switzerland. Earlier this year, the company opened a development office in Zurich after hiring a group of highly skilled engineers.
