Microsoft, Yahoo prep for their ad/sales transition

Microsoft and Yahoo provided this week an update on their plans for their sales-ad partnership.

Last summer, the pair announced that, post-regulatory approval, Microsoft would be providing search results for many of Yahoo's search properties and migrating Yahoo's ad-platform customers from Panama to Microsoft adCenter. Yahoo would be selling online ads (but not display ads) for Microsoft.

This week, the Yahoos said Yahoo's goal is to complete the transition of its U.S. and Canadian ad customers to adCenter "before the start of the 2010 holiday season." However, if it looks like "we cannot transition with quality before the holiday period, we'll defer the transition until the early part of 2011."

"To provide as much flexibility as possible, we intend to offer a window of several weeks in late summer, during which you can choose the time to initiate and complete your transition," according to a Yahoo blog post.

Microsoft is expecting to lose $300 million in the first two years of the deal, then start earning a “decent return,” explained as “$400 million steady-state," the Redmondians acknowledged last year.

Meanwhile, it looks like Alex Gounares is leaving Microsoft, after all. Last October, Gounares, Corporate Vice President of Advertising Research and Development for Microsoft, took parental leave. I heard Gounares was leaving Microsoft all together, which Microsoft officials denied, saying he would become the CTO of Online Services. According to AllThingsDigital on May 7, Gounares is leaving Microsoft to become AOL's CTO.