AOL and Microsoft have recently paired up to combine their strengths and become an advertising supernova. AOL will soon be taking control of the management and sales of display and mobile, as well as video ads on Microsoft ads around the globe. Microsoft’s Bing will displace Google as the engine powering the search results and ads on AOL’s sites. Although this won’t be rolling out until January, both companies have begun training one another on their strategies.
According to a recent analysis done by comScore, Google currently holds a 64 percent share while Microsoft is at 20 percent. When AOL switches search engines, we may see a shift. Last year, Yahoo witnessed a massive jump in its share after replacing Google with Mozilla’s Firefox browser.
AOL is widely known for its “barbell” strategy which refers to the connection between programmatic advertising and marketing services with data and analytics. Microsoft’s sales strategy is typically content based and AOL is strong programmatically.
While we may not witness the official rollout until the winter, we can expect big things from Microsoft and AOL.