Microsoft has teamed up with OpenX, an online advertising provider and relative whippersnapper, to promote each other's internet technologies to their respective customers.

OpenX has developed a system for serving ads on websites, and the deal with Microsoft will significantly expand the system's distribution as it seeks to expand its roster of major web publishers, said CEO Tim Cadogan.

OpenX will also allow its users to harness Microsoft technology to analyse the content of a web page and match relevant ads to that page.

No financial terms of the multiyear deal have been disclosed, but Peter MacDonald, Microsoft’s director of advertising business development said the deal will present both companies with opportunities to benefit from it.

The deal is the latest in the rapidly-moving arena of ad serving technology, which allows web publishers to manage ads across their sites, reports Reuters.

OpenX competes with products such as Google’s DoubleClick and Microsoft’s own aQuantive offering.

While Microsoft’s ad-serving technology is only hosted in Microsoft’s data centers, OpenX allows publishers to install the software on their own computers. OpenX technology is also open-source, allowing for a substantial degree of customisation.

MacDonald said the deal did not signify that Microsoft was shifting its focus away from offering ad-serving technology.

Microsoft acquired aQuantive in 2007 for roughly $6 billion, and in August 2009, it sold aQuantive’s ad agency business, Razorfish, to Publicis for $530 million.

OpenX has more than 50 million web publisher customers and runs more than 300 billion page impressions a month through its software. The company, which raised $10 million in funding in May, launched a separate online ad exchange marketplace earlier this year.