Yandex has long been dominant in the Russian search market – with 61.9% of all search traffic in Russia, but Google has been making inroads into their dominance.

Google has been an easy way for international companies to access those in Russia through search ads, but Yandex has been pushing internationally to court some of those same advertisers and to assert their dominance to reach those in Russia.  While Russian companies are comfortable using Yandex, international companies just don’t know Yandex or the Russian market as well.

According to Bloomberg, Yandex has been working hard to change this with an international ad sales office based in Switzerland and has “expanded sales to foreign advertisers tenfold over two years, reaching about $85 million in 2013.”

Most of Yandex’s new international revenue is coming from Germany, France and the U.K., Lukey said. Demand from Chinese Internet stores is also rising, as services such as Alibaba’s AliExpress and Taobao Marketplace expand beyond their home country, and smaller peers follow suit, Lukey said.

The foreign sales operation has helped Yandex boost its portion of Russia’s search-related advertising. In the first half, its share of such ads rose to 71 percent from 65 percent a year earlier, data from Russia’s Association of Communications Agencies shows. Revenue from foreign ad customers increased to 7 percent of Yandex’s sales last year.

One thing Yandex has going for, is they know the Russian market much better than Google does.  In fact, many people claim they are “Russia’s Google”, with their own map services and extensive local results.  However, because many international companies are more comfortable working with Google – something they are doing for markets worldwide – but Yandex has been pushing to change that.

For those interested in advertising on Yandex, they have an advertising network with English-speaking ad professionals available for international opportunities.

Yandex offers advertisers a sophisticated service for placing text ads on both its search result pages and millions of pages on its advertising network, in total showing ads to over 59 million people daily. The Yandex.Direct Advertising Network covers various business spheres, from construction to banking, and diverse areas of interest. Yandex.Direct allows for targeting by location (down to city level) and by timing for ad exposure, along with thematic and behavioral targeting on partner sites.

Yandex also offers display ad placement on the pages of its most popular services, such as Mail, News, Weather, Traffic, Market etc, as well as on the Home Page — a single placement that will bring you 29 million unique views daily!