Microsoft and Facebook forge new Bing deal on search and advertising
Microsoft and Facebook have worked together since 2007. But their relationship is now evolving, with both sides giving up a little but receiving more in exchange. In essence, Facebook is gaining back advertising opportunities while Microsoft, through its Bing search engine, will be gaining exposure on the most popular social network in the world.
In 2007, Microsoft and Facebook forged a deal which saw the former invest $240 million in the latter. For that influx of cash, Microsoft gained the ability to serve display adverts on the social networking site. The two companies have continued to build their relationship since then, with Bing powering Web search on Facebook in the U.S.
However, Facebook has grown by a huge amount since that deal of 2007 was struck, which has led to a new way forward for the two companies’ cooperation.
As Facebook endeavors to start turning a profit, the huge advertising potential of the site and its colossal number of daily committed users has led Facebook to protect its stake in on-site advertising. So Microsoft is out, with Facebook now taking over sole responsibility for the display advertisements on its site. Microsoft will, however, continue to provide search adverts on Facebook.
This makes perfect sense as Facebook knows a lot more about its users and what they’re interested in than Microsoft. And with Facebook ramping up its efforts to learn more about its users all the time, this is only going to become more obvious and relevant.
Microsoft isn’t losing out entirely though. Bing will now be the search provider on the site for all 400 million of Facebook’s users worldwide. What’s more, rather than being merely links, the Bing integration will comprise more of the features present on the search engine itself. Which can only serve to help Microsoft spread the word that there’s an alternative search engine to Google on the Web.
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