Microsoft, AOL Sign 10-Year Search, Display Deal

Microsoft and AOL have inked an exclusive 10-year deal that will see Microsoft's Bing replace Google as the search engine providing 100% of the organic search results and search ads when people search on AOL's sites. But the deal, which starts on Jan. 1, 2016, doesn't only target Google's search dominance. As part of the arrangement, AOL will now handle display, mobile and video ad sales for all of Microsoft's properties  in its top nine global markets, which include the U.S., U.K., Canada, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan.

Of the $81.6 billion  advertisers are expected to spend on search ads worldwide this year, 54.7% is expected to go toward Google and 4.2% to Microsoft.
Obviously Microsoft and AOL have a lot of catching up to do, but the companies are banking on the tie speeding up the process.
"Our clients will benefit from a very scaled solution to distribute media money at a global scale on the ads side, but also we're going to get a comprehensive search offer out of the deal that we think brings exceptional search capabilities, a great consumer experience and something that Microsoft continues to invest in," said AOL President Bob Lord.
In addition to increasing the ad supply that Microsoft and AOL can sell to advertisers, the deal should grow the number of people -- or "reach" in industry parlance -- that the two companies can sell. Microsoft and AOL are still ironing out details to make sure they don't violate their respective users' privacy, but the companies plan to eventually combine their user data as well as AOL parent company Verizon's customer data, so that brands will be able to target their ads based on that data.