Last year, Yahoo began striking out on its own in mobile paid search, marking Yahoo’s first divergence from its search alliance partnership with Microsoft’s Bing Ads.
Though Yahoo’s mobile paid search program is still in relative infancy, new data suggest it is starting to take share from its search alliance partner by transitioning traffic previously served by Bing Ads.
Yahoo began serving search ads to mobile traffic on its own properties through its marketplace for native and mobile search ads, Yahoo Gemini, which launched in February. The rate at which the company has been transitioning ads traffic from Bing Ads to Gemini escalated significantly in the second half of last year according to digital marketing firm RKG.
Yahoo can go after this segment on its own without violating terms of the deal because mobile search was not part of the search alliance deal.
On Wednesday, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer told attendees at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference that she is in talks with Microsoft about ways to change the search alliance deal they entered into nearly five years ago, according to USA Today.
To see RKG’s data and learn more about the impact of Yahoo’s moves in mobile search and what it might signal for the future of Yahoo’s search business and the search alliance, see our earlier in-depth coverage at Search Engine Land: Yahoo Gemini Gaining Mobile Search Share, But Not At Google’s Expense, Yet
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