Yahoo and Microsoft update search deal with ad team integration
Yahoo and Microsoft have updated their 2009 search agreement to change both how results are displayed and to integrate advertising teams with engineering groups to bolster efficiency at the companies.
Following months of negotiation, the decade-year agreement has a been updated to grant Yahoo - which is powered by Microsoft’s Bing Search - more freedom to display search results in different ways on varying platforms. The results however will still retain Bing ads on most of its desktop traffic, reports the Wall Street Journal.
As a result of the deal, Microsoft will exclusively man the sales force for Bing ads while Yahoo will maintain its Gemini ad platform. Furthermore, each sales team will be embedded with their respective engineering teams to “allow both companies to service advertisers more efficiently”.
EMarketer estimates that Yahoo and Microsoft will own a combined 6.5 per cent of the $81.59bn search market globally in 2015. This comes after Bing saw its global share increase from 3.7 per cent to 4.2 per cent in 2014.
The deal comes one day after the EU launched a complaint against search rival Google which it accused of granting prominence to Google Shopping results "irrespective of its merits".
EMarketer estimates that Google will handle 54.5 per cent of the international search market, seconded by Chinese Baidu which will handle 8.8 per cent of global traffic in 2015.