Hot on the heels of Microsoft handing over Bing imaging assets and employees to Uber, AOL has announced a partnership and deal that will see it take over sales and management of online advertisements on Microsoft Web properties:
The deal, which was announced on Monday (US time), will see AOL take over ads for such sites as MSN Homepage, Outlook.com, Skype, Xbox, and ads in apps. Markets affected include the US, UK, Canada, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain. "The arrangement will improve ad campaign efficiency and effectiveness through the delivery of scaled premium inventory across display, video and mobile, and enables marketers to deeply target premium audiences globally in key verticals, including autos, entertainment, health & fitness, lifestyle, money, news, sports, travel, and weather," AOL gushed in a canned statement.
The partnership also includes a new ten-year arrangement in which the AOL portal will switch its search engine to Bing from January 1, 2016, while AOL will sell and manage ads both on its own search site and on Microsoft's. "This deal is further evidence of the quality of Bing results and the performance of the Bing Ads marketplace," Microsoft corporate veep Rik van der Kooi said in a statement. "And we will continue our focus on delivering world class consumer services and content and look forward to partnering with AOL to market them."
Online ads have never been a massive business for Microsoft. Compared to its rival Google, which earns in excess of 90 per cent of its revenue from its various ad businesses, Microsoft tucks its online ad sales into its "Devices and Consumer Other" reporting segment, which itself accounts for only about a tenth of the software giant's revenue.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Wednesday July 01 2015, @07:50AM
*Most laptops sold in the last several years do not have windows installed on them.
You got a cite for that, because that's a pretty bold claim that I can't find any evidence to support. Maybe tablets out number laptops sold, and tablets are predominently non-windows, but tablets aren't laptops, and you claimed laptops.
And no tablets aren't laptop substitutes.