Yahoo and Microsoft have been working hard in the past year to integrate their search marketplaces. Their goal is to give advertisers a one-stop-shop for both search engines. Both search engines are taking the transition one step at a time.
After first the US, now all digital advertisers and publishers in the United Kingdom, Ireland and France have been transitioned to Microsoft adCenter. Next up: Germany, Switzerland and Austria.
Off course both search engines are excited:
Jon Myers, Director, Account Management UK and Ireland says:
“Yahoo! Search is really an important part of our business and we have invested a lot of time to make the transition as efficient and as seamless as possible for our advertisers and publishers. Now we can focus on delivering compelling content for our users and customers to build relevant online experiences.”
While Cedric Chambaz of Microsoft states:
“Consolidating the Bing and Yahoo! audience in UK, France and Ireland, is a major milestone in the global implementation of our alliance with Yahoo!. We now deliver a competitive search offering that provides both quality audiences and opportunities to leverage strategic partnerships to efficiently deliver a strong return on investment for advertisers. Think for instance about how the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft further enriches our alliance with Yahoo!, by putting Bing in the hand of millions of mobile users. I am personally thrilled to have reached such a milestone and cannot wait for June when Germany, Austria and Switzerland will join the list of countries where adCenter is the single platform to reach our combined audience, where ever and whenever it searches.”
What’s in it for them and for us?
So Microsoft and Yahoo have combined forces in the UK and France. That will help them get a better grip on the audience. Two makes a bigger force than one off course. It will make that they have a stronger ‘force’ going up against Google advertising, after all they can offer their (potential) clients a larger audience. And that is exactly what is the advantage for the user: next to the one-stop-shop where you can manage all your advertising in one place, there is the bigger reach.
Adcenter should be a competitor for Adwords and it could very well be a very profitable way of advertising since Adwords is effective, but also has a lot of competition. Still, what both engines do need to make this more effective is more users.
After the UK and France Microsoft and Yahoo are now focussing on the German speaking countries Germany, Switzerland and Austria.
See below the video Microsoft and Yahoo made for explaining the search alliance.
