Yahoo and Bebo join forces
Thursday, September 13th, 2007Yahoo UK and Ireland has signed a deal with Britain-based social network Bebo in a bid to challenge Google’s market dominance.
Bebo will benefit from Yahoo display advertising, the inclusion of Yahoo Answers and the creation of a Bebo-branded toolbar.
Yahoo’s main goal is to help companies improve their online marketing to 16-to-24-year-olds, ClickZ.com reports.
Gaining access to Bebo’s information about its users will be a boon to Yahoo, especially in conjunction with the targeting technology it acquired from BlueLithium last week.
Blake Chandlee, commercial director for Yahoo UK and Ireland, said: “We started looking at how do we start to go off-network to bring about a more scalable marketplace.
“The Right Media exchange helped a little bit, the BlueLithium does a great job as they line up with our core values, and the Bebo deal is the icing on top of the cake.”
He continued: “This puts us in the number one position in the media perceptive in the U.K. with inventory and page views…to set our sights on Google.”
Mr Chandlee said he hoped the partnership would challenge Google’s close to 75 per cent share of the search engine query market.
