Bing and Yahoo search advertising will merge by the end of October, Microsoft said Tuesday.

Both search engines will move to Microsoft's advertising platform, adCenter, in the U.S. and Canada. The combination is part of the Microsoft-Yahoo search partnership.

Last week, Bing began providing all the search results for Yahoo's websites in the U.S., making Bing the second largest search engine behind Google. Google is still the king of the hill, with 66 percent of the search market. Together, Bing and Yahoo have 28 percent, according to research firm comScore.

Most users will probably not notice a difference. The handover is more significant for advertisers, who will no longer have to buy advertising at three different sites -- Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Yahoo's advertisers will have to make the move to adCenter.

Major advertisers, worried about Google's de facto monopoly, want the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership to create more competition for search advertising.

Here is lat week's Seattle Times story on the recombination of Microsoft Yahoo.

Earlier, Microsoft said it hoped to complete the ad transition by the end of the year but that its first priority was to have a smooth transition for advertisers during the holidays. It sounds like the advertisers feel good about where the two companies are.

Here is Microsoft's blog item about the advertising changes.

And here is the logo for the Microsoft Yahoo partnership on search -- not a joint venture to make saltwater taffy -- below.

From Pri0