Microsoft didn’t disclose any financial terms regarding its deal with display ads to AOL and maps to Uber. This 10-year agreement will enable AOL users to have access to world-class search powered by Bing across the company’s global portfolio of sites.
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Uber will acquire a portion of Microsoft’s maps technology and extend employment offers to around 100 engineers on Microsoft’s mapping team, the ride-hailing company said Monday.
While Uber does what it needs to do, Microsoft is tightening its focus.
AOL will begin handling sales of display, mobile and video ads on Microsoft properties in the US and eight other markets.
Microsoft is reportedly going to axe its display ad business, instead handing over all such operations handed over to AOL and AppNexus.
Programmatic marketing has recently emerged as a fast-growing approach for automating the purchase and placement of online and other ads. Bing will become the default search engine for all web searches on AOL from next year onwards as part of the deal. Bing replaces the Google search engine.
“No Longer Collecting Mapping Imagery”.
This latest deal with Microsoft is expected to close in the next month.
“Over the past year, we have taken many actions to focus the company’s efforts around our core business strategy”, Microsoft toldRe/code.
In May, we reported that Uber was bidding to buy Nokia’s Here mapping technology for $3 billion, amidst speculation that Uber wished to have more ownership over their customers’ data.
Last week, Nadella said in a companywide email that Microsoft needed to “make some tough choices in areas where things are not working”, and it seems display advertising fits the bill.
Microsoft has decided that now it will not collect the data and imagery for Bing Maps itself, and will rather rely on partners.
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The employees making the trip across Silicon Valley have been responsible for bringing imagery from the air and the street, into Microsoft Bing Maps platform.
