Yahoo inks T-Mobile UK deal for banner ads on mobile

January 18, 2008

Make it a banner year for T-Mobile

Web’n’walk is a T-Mobile mobile Internet portal with a Google search engine. Now it will offer graphical ads sold and served by Yahoo Inc.

Yahoo will exclusively provide targeted display advertising on web’n’ walk in Britain. Per the deal, Yahoo and T-Mobile will collaborate to enable advertisers to send targeted, interactive advertisements to consumers.

"A core part of Yahoo’s mobile strategy is to become the advertising partner of choice and this partnership with T-Mobile signifies an extremely positive step towards this goal," said Zealous Wiley, spokesman for Yahoo.

"We are focused on extending our leadership in both display advertising and in mobile services and this new partnership demonstrates our continued momentum," he said.

The first mobile ads on web’n’walk will appear in the first half of this year.

T-Mobile launched the web’n’walk Internet service in 2005. Web’n’walk lets users access the regular Internet with price plans for Contract and Pay as you Go customers varying from $1 a day with the five-day pass for $5 to $15 a month for unlimited Web browsing.

The T-Mobile deal for graphical ads is not Yahoo’s first. The Sunnyvale, CA-based company has a similar advertising deal with Vodafone. Add the agreement with T-Mobile and Yahoo has access to two of the top four wireless carriers in Britain.

Mobile Internet advertising has grown rapidly in recent years. Yahoo has been aggressively targeting mobile deals to sell and manage ads after intense competition in its core Web search and advertising business from rival Google.

T-Mobile Germany opened web’n’walk to mobile advertising in July. Since then, advertisers have been able to place links and banners on web’n’walk portal pages, including the web’n’walk homepage with the Google search engine and across all the category pages.

Web’n’walk categories include selected links to topic areas such as news, finance, sports, travel, tabloids, search, shopping and erotica.

Observers say that Yahoo’s strides to migrate its online strategy to the mobile channel may put the industry on the path to ad-supported mobile Web access, thus resulting in a lower cost of access or a flat rate for mobile phone users.