Search marketers have been talking about the recent transition from Yahoo to Bing, which Brafton reported last month, but now a renewed search alliance with Google may help AOL gain some appeal as an advertising platform. AOL announced today that it had extended its partnership with Google, and the two companies will broaden their joint efforts.
The alliance is poised to enhance search products on AOL for improved user experiences, and it will also bring the small search engine Google's advertising tools – which may be of interest to marketers. Google will be providing AOL some of its strongest advertising formats to offer users the most contextually relevant ads possible. AOL seems to hope this will draw more ad dollars to the platform.
Google officials seem more excited about the prospect of adopting AOL's popular content. The updated agreement outlines that the two search engines will now share video and mobile content. AOL will work with the search giant on mobile apps, and its video content will be delivered on YouTube.
"We're excited to deepen our partnership. This agreement combines Google's expertise in search and advertising with AOL's strength in online content," said Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO of Google.
Meanwhile, AOL is pleased that search market leader Google has agreed to continue this longstanding partnership. "Today is another important step in the turnaround of AOL," said Tim Armstrong, AOL's chairman and CEO.
AOL is in need of a turnaround. While the search engine consistently makes comScore's search rankings, the research firm reported AOL continued its decline this summer, accounting for just 2.3 percent of explicit core searches in July.
