Based in Milan, Overture Italy builds on the company's growing European presence, headquartered in Ireland and including operations in the UK, Germany and France.
At launch, Overture's Italian affiliate partners include one of the top Italian ISPs Tiscali, as well as portals such as Excite and Lycos.
The partnership with MSN is scheduled to launch at the beginning of June. In addition, Overture will soon begin serving its pay-for-performance results to AltaVista's Italian .
Overture's Italian pay-for-performance search listings are generated by advertisers who bid for placement on keywords relevant to their businesses.
A multilingual editorial team based in Dublin carefully screens these listings before they are distributed to the company's Italian partners. An advertiser will only pay Overture the amount of their bid when a consumer clicks on their search listing.
As one of the fastest-growing advertising mediums in Europe, paid-for search is expected to contribute €363m (£258.2m) to adspend in that market in 2005, up from €140m in 2002, according to Jupiter Research.
In addition, Overture has named former Salomon Brothers and Citibank banker Gianluca Carrera as managing director for Overture Italy. Carrera joins from Godado.com, a pan-European pay-for-performance search provider, which he help found.
Nick Hynes, Overture Europe president and managing director, said: "We already have agreements with some of the key Italian partners and look forward to expanding our network with our range of products in the coming months."
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