Nadella's vision of what Microsoft should be continues to take shape. Just last week, Verizon completed its $4.4 billion acquisition of AOL just six weeks after announcing the deal. In April, CEOs Marissa Mayer and Satya Nadella mutually agreed to amend the original partnership which meant Microsoft was once again in charge of selling its own ads.ĪOL has been in the news a lot as of late. The company entered into a 10-year partnership with Yahoo in 2009 in which Yahoo would be responsible for selling Bing ads. Microsoft's decision to outsource its advertising sales department isn't all that surprising. Sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that up to 1,200 people could be impacted by the move. In a rare disclosure, the Microsoft executives also mentioned Bing is a sustainable multibillion-dollar business, so that's where they are focusing on. The duo said the news was evidence of Microsoft's renewed focus on its strengths. Rik van der Kooi, Microsoft corporate vice president of advertising and consumer monetization and Frank Holland, Microsoft corporate vice president of A&O, announced the change in a blog post earlier today.

In exchange, Bing will now power search and search advertising across all of AOL's properties for the next 10 years. Microsoft on Monday revealed it will be shutting down portions of its display advertising business across nine markets and handing off those duties to AOL and AppNexus.

Bing news explorer