Yahoo and Microsoft revise 6-year-old search deal with two major changes

After months of discussions, Yahoo and Microsoft today announced that they’ve “amended” their six-year-old search agreement — the deal that saw Microsoft power and monetize Yahoo’s search service.

In a joint statement, the companies described two key changes to the partnership [emphasis ours]:

1. “Yahoo will now have increased flexibility to enhance the search experience on any platform, since the partnership is non-exclusive for both desktop and mobile. Yahoo will continue to serve Bing ads and search results for a majority of its desktop search traffic.”
2. “Microsoft will become the exclusive salesforce for ads delivered by Microsoft’s Bing Ads platform, while Yahoo will continue to be the exclusive salesforce for Yahoo’s Gemini ads platform. Integrating the sales teams with those responsible for engineering will allow both companies to service advertisers more effectively. Microsoft and Yahoo plan to begin to transition managed advertiser sales responsibilities this summer.”

The first change will enable Yahoo to monetize up to 49 percent of its desktop search traffic via something other than Bing’s ad platform. This change offers Yahoo far more control and opens up new revenue potential for the search service.

The second change may allow Yahoo to cut costs, as it sees Microsoft taking over the “advertiser sales responsibilities” for Bing ads “this summer.”