A new ad sales pact between Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL has the tech companies teaming up against a common enemy, Google. By selling ad inventory on each other's sites, the three aim to hang onto ad revenue that previously was lost to third-party networks. Their goal is to convince big Web properties to share ad inventory and get ad holding companies to run some purchases through their sites. Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL agreed to sell each others' "class 2 display" inventory -- images the companies cannot sell on their own and usually hand over to ad networks.
e-Commerce Times