This week Microsoft announced new levels of partnership with both AOL and AppNexus.
Bing will now power search and search advertising across AOL. This 10-year agreement will enable AOL users to have access to search powered by Bing across the company’s sites. Now with 20% organic market share in the U.S., Bing continues to grow organically as well as through key partnerships like the one with AOL.
In addition to the search partnership, AOL will become the seller of all display formats, including mobile and video, for the Microsoft portfolio across nine markets around the world.
By introducing one selling motion across AOL’s portfolio of sites, such as Huffington Post, Adap.tv and TechCrunch and Microsoft’s consumer services, including MSN, Xbox, Outlook.com, and Skype, they are positioned to deliver more scale of inventory and target audiences across display, video and mobile. Their advertising customers will have one consistent experience as they transition their sales and trade marketing employees in these nine markets to AOL.
With Microsoft’s extended AppNexus partnership, AOL will become their exclusive programmatic technology and sales partner in 10 markets mostly across Nordic countries.
AppNexus is the lead technology partner for Microsoft’s programmatic business. Last year, they started a pilot program in the Nordic countries to take those markets to a fully programmatic sales motion. More than 50% of business in these markets today is programmatic. The development of the partnership will give advertisers programmatic access to more supply of premium, brand-safe Microsoft inventory, while simplifying the buying process.
This deal will begin on January 1, 2016.
