Strange Bedfellows, Yahoo! and Google Partner For Contextual Advertising

In the world of consumer technology, it's pretty easy to spot the rivals. Apple doesn't exactly get along with Samsung. Microsoft doesn't exactly get along with Apple. Sony probably isn't best of friends with Nintendo. And in the search world, Yahoo and Google are obvious counterparts. But recently, the two came together in an unusual way. Yahoo announced this week that it would be partnering with Google in order to provide "relevant and well-targeted content -- whether that be editorial or advertising content." The contextual advertising deal is a global one, though it's (importantly) non-exclusive. Yahoo will now display Google ads on various Yahoo properties, and even on select co-branded sites using Google's AdSense for Content and Google's AdMob services.


It's important to note that this is just yet another contextual ad partner for Yahoo, but it's certainly curious that Yahoo would reach out to a rival for help. Yahoo has stated that most users won't even see a notable difference in how or where ads appear, but we'll be interested to see what this grows into -- and how it impacts the overall relationship between the two.