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Microsoft's mission to make Bing a household name on the UK airwaves has seen the company's search engine become the new sponsor of The Simpsons on Channel 4, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the show.

The deal makes Microsoft the first technology company to sponsor the satirical show, and a series of Bing advertisements will run alongside the show (taking over from the Government’s ‘change for life’ campaign) - airing during the advertising break and before and after each episode.

According to campaignlive.co.uk this will be the first time that Microsoft has used television sponsorships to promote their products. The global technology giant had previously planned to use the controversial show Family Guy to promote the launch of Windows 7. But at the lat minute the plans were scrapped as executives felt that the show was too risqué and didn’t “fit with the windows brand”.

The idents that air inbetween the show air the same week that Microsoft launch their advertising campaign for Bing. The Bing televison ads question the need for “information overload” which is apparently received by users of other search engines – and aims to encourage internet users to try a new search experience with their ‘decision engine’.

With this series of UK advertisements Microsoft hopes that Bing will take some of Google’s market share. Google dominates the search market in the UK at the moment, accounting for over 86% of the current search engine usage with Bing and Yahoo! sharing 4% each.