Yahoo to serve ads on AT&T wireless portal

By Giselle Tsirulnik

February 1, 2008

Glowing reviews of oneSearch with voice

Internet giant Yahoo Inc. will serve Web advertising to AT&T Inc.'s wireless customers in an effort to demonstrate early leadership in the mobile channel.

The agreement creates new marketing opportunities in mobile search and display advertising on a handset and a PC. Yahoo now has access to around 70 million AT&T mobile customers. Yahoo will also power the search on the customer portal for AT&T Mobility.

"We have a long-standing relationship with AT&T for broadband and we are excited to include mobile advertising and mobile services into our relationship," said Nicole Leverich, spokeswoman for Yahoo, Sunnyvale, CA. "We see mobile as a big opportunity and our move with AT&T demonstrates our strength and early leadership in the mobile arena.

Yahoo has a similar deal with T-Mobile's mobile Internet Web'n'walk portal. The Internet company sells and serves graphical ads on T-Mobile's portal in Britain.

Yahoo is an Internet brand and claims to be one of the most trafficked Web destinations worldwide.

"I think it's great for Yahoo to expand out of the online space and extend its presence to other channels and other customers," said Shar VanBoskirk, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc., Cambridge, MA. Yahoo's advantage over Google is that it knows more about its users than Google and to extend that to wireless is a great advantage."

AT&T is a communications holding company. It is known for directory publishing and advertising sales of its Yellow Pages and Yellowpages.com organizations.

In the second quarter of this year new mobile customers will get a new on-deck AT&T Web portal powered by Yahoo. The portal will run on the My Yahoo and Yahoo Mail platforms.

Once the portal launches, all AT&T customer can access it and e-mail services at no additional charge, even those without AT&T Internet service. For example, an AT&T wireless customer in Seattle could establish an att.net email address and access email via a mobile smartphone or a PC.

As part of the alliance, AT&T's 14.2 million broadband customers will be able to access co-branded versions of Yahoo's mobile Web properties and the Yahoo Go.

AT&T's Yellowpages.com becomes the lead local search experience on both the wireless and PC screens for AT&T customers.

The agreement calls for revenue sharing, but detailed financial terms are not being disclosed at this time.

"Through this relationship both companies get to focus on what they are good at," Ms. Leverich said. "The combination of our mobile applications and advertising services, with AT&T's leadership in customer connectivity, mobility and robust networks once again raises the bar for the entire industry.

"We are ultimately helping grow the market," she said.