Yahoo! and Microsoft, who have been in talks regarding a search alliance for some time now, have recently received regulatory clearance for the same.
According to the official press release from Yahoo! and Microsoft, this alliance will enable their business users to connect with a larger audience of potential customers, thus saving them valuable time and money.
Users will now be able to search ad inventory from both the sites simultaneously, by using the Microsoft search engine, Bing, which presently has a combined audience of about 577 million users worldwide.
Advertisers will be able to use Microsoft adCenter to advertise to the combined client base of Yahoo! and Microsoft.
The alliance will obviously help both the companies concerned to improve monetisation for their partners, eventually helping the companies to generate more revenue for themselves.
Though both companies will continue to have different consumer search experiences, Microsoft will manage the technology for both of them through Bing. Yahoo! will support high volume advertisers, SEO and SEM agencies and resellers and their clients. Microsoft on the other hand will support self service advertisers. All ads will go through the Microsoft ad-Center.
This alliance will be implemented across the U.S. Canada, U.K. and France. Elsewhere in Europe, Latin America and Asia, Microsoft is already a partner of Yahoo!
At present, ads will continue to show up on Bing search results, just as before, and advertisers will be informed about the alliance once it actually begins. They aim to be able to implement the new setup before the 2010 holiday season, but may delay it to early 2011 if needed.
