Yahoo! UK and Ireland has signed a pan-European deal with Espotting
Media to offer a paid-for-placement service on the portal.
The service, called Sponsored Matches, will feature Espotting's top five
pay-per-click search listings on Yahoo!'s search results pages in the
UK, as well as in Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Yahoo! will receive
a fee for placing Espotting's results on the portal.
To differentiate between paid-for and editorial placements within
Yahoo!'s search results, the paid-for-placement listings will be clearly
highlighted.
While this is Yahoo! UK and Ireland's first European deal with a
pay-per-click search company, Yahoo! in the US already partners with
Espotting's main European rival Overture, formerly GoTo.com.
"This firmly positions us as the number one paid-for-placement player in
Europe, and extends our reach by 70 per cent, which is great for our
advertisers," said Seb Bishop, co-founder of Espotting Media. "It also
improves Yahoo!'s search product, giving its users access to our growing
base of 4,500 advertisers, such as Procter & Gamble, eBay and
Orange."
Yahoo! claims that this is the first deal of the New Year that is in
keeping with chairman and chief executive of Yahoo! Terry Semel's vision
to build more diverse revenue streams for the company.
"Launching Sponsored Matches is a great opportunity for businesses to
promote themselves to our massive audience and is absolutely in line
with the new global strategy of developing alternative revenue streams,
moving away from our core media model focus," said James Bilefield,
Yahoo! UK and Ireland's business development director.
Espotting launched in Germany and France at the end of 2001, and will
move into Italy and Spain later this year.
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