Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo have all pledged to fight the dominance of Google’s pay per click (PPC) advertising services in a venture of their own.
According to IT Pro Portal, the three have collaborated on a shared ad platform that allows advertisers to place ads on the sites of all three companies with a single buy option.
While advertisers can still invest in all three firms’ existing PPC platforms separately, Yahoo’s Network Plus, AOL’s Advertising.com and Microsoft’s Media Network, the new arrangement offers up some notable benefits.
For example, InvestorPlace.com says that “the amount and variety of unsold inventory in the ad pool and the potential reach of each ad have been scaled up enormously”.
It also says that a real-time bidding (RTB) system, can push the highest bids forwards when placements meet “defined criteria for particular website and user categories,” from any contract placed on the service.
In addition, the RTB allows for unreserved spaces from any of the companies to be filled by the others.
Yahoo and AOL’s inventory will be stored on Yahoo’s Right Media Exchange (RMX) while Microsoft’s is available on the Microsoft Advertising Exchange.