In a marketing promotion to bring millions of Angry Birds' pig-hating fans to Microsoft Bing, developer Rovio announced Monday that it will integrate Bing Search in its back story for a limited time.
"For a limited period, Angry Birds and Angry Birds Seasons feature integrated, contextual Bing searches to help players find solutions for tricky levels, and discover the elusive Golden Eggs," Angry Birds maker Rovio stated on its blog.
The product placement involves Bing Image Search, Bing Maps, and Bing Shopping. To promote the partnership, Microsoft Bing will launch four 15-second animated spots showing the villainous pigs using Bing to locate the Birds' eggs. You can watch two of the videos below; the other two will be published on Bing's YouTube channel, Bing wrote in a blog post.
Microsoft Bing is struggling to wrest away market share from the current search juggernaut, Google. This partnership with Rovio should provide Bing with a spike in searches, but time will tell if this will make loyal Google users into loyal Bing users instead. In February Microsoft announced that Angry Birds was coming to Windows Phone 7 in the spring, following iOS and Android versions. Rovio also announced upcoming versions for Nintendo Wii and 3DS as well as PlayStation 3 and PSP.
Additional reporting by Sara Yin.
