Yahoo is, of course, a search company, and Efficient Frontier deals in online marketing. A person who’s worked for both organizations would appear to be in a somewhat unique position to talk about the future of the search and advertising industry, then, and at SES Chicago, Justin Merickel did exactly that.

Merickel used to hold the title of “Managing Director, Vertical Markets” at Yahoo. These days, his Efficient Frontier business cards read “Vice President of Marketing and New Product Development.” Meaning he’s been part of a lot of important conversations.

As for what Merickel had to pass along at SES Chicago, he talked to Abby Johnson about “the importance of lower-level data getting from advertisers and marketers out to the search engine results page,” and of some pretty big changes in what results pages look like. A significantly greater depth of information should become available.

Merickel didn’t necessarily view that as a great thing, citing an instance in which a search engine decided to show him eight highly similar pictures of bottled water. Search engines, in their efforts to outdo each other, will have to be careful that results pages don’t get too busy.

Still, as search and display come together, there should be lots of benefits for searchers, advertisers, and the search companies themselves.