According to this article at InformationWeek, Microsoft has reached an agreement with Ask.com to syndicate their paid search listings on the Ask.com network. This is a big step for Microsoft, which doesn’t have a large portion of the market share.

The company's Web sites captured about 13% of all search traffic in June, according to market watcher Comscore. The addition of Ask.com's sites to its paid search service will expose Microsoft's customer listings to an additional 5% of search traffic.

Representing a jump of about 35% in market share, this will give advertisers on Microsoft’s adManager a chance to reach more of their target market. This doesn’t really compare to the volume of search that Google and Yahoo are providing to their customers, but it’s a good start.

If you are participating in the adManager Beta, this is probably good news to you. If not, I don’t see this as reason enough to sign up. In my opinion, it’s still a better bet to go with Yahoo Search Marketing, or Google Adwords. They both have more mature user interfaces, and they both provide superior reach.

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