We posted earlier that Yahoo and Microsoft have entered an alliance that will enable a new, unified search marketplace combining the Yahoo! and Microsoft paid ad networks. The merger is supposed to be complete by late 2010 but the companies have hit a few bumps in the road. An article published in Advertising Age discusses the not-so-unexpected snags. There are a lot of moving parts, and historically, these things don’t always go as planned. So what should keep an eye on for in the Yahoo-Bing integration?

• The timeline doesn’t give marketers much leeway to test the system before the holiday season.
• Yahoo execs say if it appears they can’t reach desired quality levels, the deadline will be pushed until 2011.
• Search advertisers know how Yahoo and Bing ads perform separately. How will they perform together?
• Yahoo-Microsoft advertisers will require an AdCenter account to use the new system, but AdCenter isn’t prepared for the volume.
• Microsoft isn’t the easiest company to partner with, but there’s a sense that this can’t be allowed to fail, and so far, so good.
• At this time, Bing’s gains in search volume seem to be coming directly from Yahoo, which doesn’t help in the competition with Google.
• Today, the combined query share of Yahoo and Bing is 23.73% in the U.S. according to Hitwise. Will it be different in October or sometime in 2011?

(Source: Hitwise)

Read the entire article at Advertising Age.

If you are interested in Internet Marketing Services at Marion that include paid ads not only on Yahoo! and Microsoft sties, but also on King Google, call us at 713.623.6444 or send us an info2@marion.com.