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Microsoft's never going to win in search, right? Its only hope against Google is that marketers will decide that search ads aren't worth the money. Microsoft has new research out which purportedly shows that Internet users exposed to both search and display ads are more likely to purchase an advertiser's product than Internet users who only clicked on a search ad. The research comes from the Atlas Institute. Guess who that is?It sounds like an objective source because it has "institute" in its name. In fact, the Atlas Institute is part of AtlasDMT, which is Microsoft's ad-serving subsidiary. Conflicts of interest aside, the research won't make marketers value Google search advertising any less. Search advertising isn't supposed to convince anybody to buy anything; it's just a tool to make sure potential clients can find your products easily. WPP exec Jennifer Zola told the Wall Street Journal, "Search is still just as powerful. But things like display that looked really bad before aren't as bad. Now we can prove it."