Julia Angwin and Kevin J. Delaney examine, in detail, the potential advertising partnership between AOL and Microsoft in an article on the front page of Wednesday's Wall Street Journal.
AOL's advertising partnership is currently with Google, and Google and Time-Warner are continuing their talks, despite rumors that AOL might switch to using Microsoft's search engine and partnering to provide ads to thousands more online customers, even though the services would remain under the authority of both of their owners.
The question as to what impact this could have to online advertising and search ads remains up in the air, as AOL hangs in the balance, enjoying this bidding war against three of the most key actors in the current electronic media landscape.
According to Angwin and Delaney, "by joining their two systems, Microsoft and AOL could sell ads that would reach as many as 140 million Americans each month--or about 80% of all Internet users." The number is almost 20 million more users a month than Yahoo and over 50 million more users a month than Google.
What could this mean for the future of online advertising?
Awesome reporting Sam, you friggin'rock man!! We all miss you here at Western. Boo to McDonalds by the way.
Update: In the 12 Dec. 2005 Wall Street Journal, an article by Kevin J. Delaney and Robert A. Guth outlines Microsoft's further maneuvering to improve the performance of its search engine.
In India, Bill Gates announced that he would be using some of the advertising revenue generated by the search engine for giveaways and to provide products and services for searchers to entice them to use the engine.
How do you weigh in on this great act of benevolence, giving the ad revenue back to the people? Pretty good magician's trick, I guess, but will people see it as anything beyond the usual move toward giveaways that companies have tried forever? Will it entice people to search with Microsoft, more importantly?