Microsoft Makes Web-Ad Deal

REDMOND, Wash. (TheStreet) -- Microsoft(MSFT) has ramped up its Internet ad business, clinching a deal with online advertising specialist OpenX Technologies.

The Pasadena, Calif.-based company builds technology to place ads on Web sites, a service known as ad serving. The company says it serves more 300 billion ads per month. OpenX will now promote Microsoft's Content Ads offering, which matches online advertisements to relevant editorial content. Microsoft touts the product as a way for advertisers to boost their effectiveness, and for Web publishers to increase their revenue.

The partnership provides yet another example of Microsoft's desire to challenge Google's(GOOG) Internet dominance. OpenX plays in the same space as Google's DoubleClick technology.

Microsoft will also push OpenX to its own customers, although the tech bellwether is clearly eyeing the startup's installed base of more than 150,000 Web sites.

"Microsoft believes that rapid innovation and openness is foundational to great advertising technology," said Scott Howe, corporate vice president of Microsoft' advertiser and publisher solutions, in a statement. "OpenX is a leading technology provider of valuable options and solutions to the publisher community, and, by extension, the digital advertising ecosystem as a whole."

Under the terms of the multi-year deal, OpenX will also build a software plug-in to its own ad serving technology, enabling the company's existing customers to quickly deploy Content Ads. The two companies have not revealed the financial terms of the partnership.

Microsoft is clearly keen to expand beyond its own ad serving technology, even to the extent of clinching a deal with one of its competitors. The tech bellwether spent $6 billion to acquire OpenX rival in 2007. Earlier this year, however, Microsoft sold off aQuantive's Razorfish digital advertising business.