Yahoo! And eBay Join Forces

Yahoo! and eBay have joined forces in a new deal bringing together advertising, payment and communications, that sees them further consolidate their positions in the ongoing online feud with Microsoft and Google.

Under the multi-year partnership, “click-to-call” advertising, which allows users to click on an ad link and call advertisers direct from their computers, will be developed through eBay’s Skype and Yahoo!’s messenger. eBay will show Yahoo! paid search results on some US eBay search result pages, eBay’s payment system PayPal will be integrated across Yahoo!, and Yahoo! gains exclusive rights as a third party provider of graphical ads across eBay.com.

eBay’s newly rebranded toolbar will also allow users to click through to the Yahoo! mail service and homepage.

Terry Semel, chairman and CEO of Yahoo!, said: “Yahoo! holds a leadership position in all forms of online advertising. This partnership with eBay provides us with a great opportunity to further extend our sponsored search and graphical advertising reach to one of the largest and most active communities on the web.”

This development follows on from Google’s recent $1 billion investment in AOL, and industry figures believe that it is only a matter of time before they or Microsoft attempt to tie up a deal with the Newscorp owned social networking site MySpace, which is currently being challenged in the UK by Bebo. Over the eight weeks leading up to April 29, Bebo had an 18.6% share of social networking site page views compared to MySpace’s 17.4%.

Yahoo!: 020 7808 4200 www.yahoo.com eBay: www.ebay.com