We have known about a planned search alliance between Yahoo and Microsoft for some time now. However, the rollout of the alliance has been slow in coming. Yahoo’s Search Marketing (YSM) division announced today the planned transition from the YSM system to Microsoft’s Adcenter system.
For those unfamiliar with either YSM or Microsoft Adcenter, each is a pay-per-click (PPC) system for sponsoring ads that appear in sponsored search results. YSM and Adcenter are very similar to Google’s Adwords in this regard, although it was actually Yahoo and its previous YSM incarnation of Overture that really got the PPC ball rolling in the early days of search results ad buying.
Many have never used the Microsoft Adcenter system. While it cannot be used as rigorously and is not as flexible as Google Adwords, the Adcenter system is still very effective. It is fairly elegant and easy to use, an edge I believe it actually has over the current YSM system which is a bit clunky and non-intuitive.
Not to mention that the merge into Adcenter will bring a broader base of eyeballs for ads. Yahoo states that it will give businesses and their ads “access to up to 154 million searchers,” and that is good news to any search marketer.
