In efforts to become the exclusive provider of search and search advertising services, Bing’s partnership with AOL is now in full effect, adding another top search engine to their network. Announced last June, Bing’s new 10-year deal is meant to not only strengthen the company, but help enhance their efforts of becoming the most popular search destination for first and third party devices. January 1, 2016 marked the New Year and the official launch of the partnership.

Head of AOL’s Search Business, Tim Lemmon, was among many excited about the partnership. “Partnering with Bing allows us to provide great search results and capabilities, across all screens, to our global audiences, as well as providing our brands valuable business insights and intelligence,” Lemmon said. “We’re looking forward to working together with the Bing team and bringing our audience to the Bing Network.”

What Does This Mean For Advertising?

Advertising will continue to display as normal, but with a few alterations as to who it’s coming from. Advertising with Bing will now expand your advertising network to AOL. This means your ad reach with Bing has now grown it’s demographic to AOL, 51% of Yahoo’s desktop search traffic, and all of Bing’s. This is a huge step for advertisers as close to one-third of US PC web searches happen on Bing.com and Yahoo is the top three search engine, with AOL as the fifth.

Not only will AOL be displaying more of Bing’s ads now, but AOL is also in charge of selling display ads in Microsoft’s nine global markets, such as the US, Canada, and European countries like Italy and Spain. This change was intended to help Microsoft and Bing focus on bigger priorities.

“We are committed to advertising as a business model, including display advertising. But we want to focus on building great content and communication services and monetize them by advertising,” said Rik van der Kooi, Corporate Vice President, Advertising and Consumer Monetization for Microsoft Advertising.

Google used to own AOL and has yet to say much about the new partnership, or if renewing was ever in their original plans. Fear not, Google will still reign supreme when it comes to search and search advertising, but powering 2.51 of the top five search engines is something to be proud of. Congratulations, Bing!