At Yahoo search, the buck stops with Bing. Yahoo has officially transitioned its search back end to Microsoft’s Bing platform.
The announcement is the first major move in the 10-year deal Microsoft and Yahoo inked after the companies failed to execute a merger agreement. Forged just 13 months ago, the 10-year search partnership will see Microsoft’s Bing technology powering Yahoo search and Yahoo will become the worldwide sales arm for both companies’ premium search advertisers.
“Microsoft and Yahoo won’t take down Google. But they’ll provide broader reach and greater simplicity for advertisers on their combined network — which now has enough scale to be meaningful to advertisers,” said Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence.
“The Bing index may help Yahoo be more competitive from a consumer standpoint as well,” he added. “However, Yahoo will have to get busy and ‘innovate’ around the user experience as it has said it will do.”
Migrating To AdCenter
So now that Bing is officially powering Yahoo’s search results in the U.S. and Canada — in English only for now; other languages will come later — what’s next?
As the agreement continues to roll out, advertisers will see self-serve advertising for both companies fulfilled by Microsoft’s AdCenter platform, and prices for all search ads will continue to be set by AdCenter’s automated auction process. Each company will maintain its own display-advertising business and sales force.
“We continue to work hard on the migration to AdCenter, and are optimistic about completing this phase later this fall,” said Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Online Services Division. “As we have said all along, our primary goal is to provide advertisers with a quality transition experience in 2010, while being mindful of the holiday season.”
Yahoo’s Innovation Plans
What will the change look like to the end user? The Yahoo web, image…