U.S. Cellular, the nation's sixth-largest wireless carrier, has picked JumpTap for providing mobile search and advertising to its subscribers.

News of the deal comes soon after JumpTap opened offices in Stockholm, Sweden, and Madrid, Spain, as part of an international push. U.S. Cellular is JumpTap's 17th carrier partner.

"Carriers are realizing more and more that if they can provide a relevant advertising experience leveraging their data, search word query data and behavioral data, the consumer will have a much more positive experience," said Paran Johar, Los Angeles-based chief marketing officer of JumpTap.

"That is what we're seeing more and more operators understand -- that the mobile phone is an uncluttered personal device," he said. "Relevant advertising is essential and that's what we enable through our white-label search engine and our publisher network."

Based in Chicago, U.S. Cellular offers wireless service to 6.2 million customers in 26 states. The company has 8,700 employees.

Using JumpTap's technology, U.S. Cellular customers will have one-click access to the Internet as well as the ability to locate on- and off-deck content.

JumpTap will rely on U.S. Cellular's data and usage information to deliver relevant search results.

In addition, U.S. Cellular subscribers will be able to get news, sports, flight updates, chat services, maps, directions and white pages through JumpTap's vertical categories.

Also, national content publishers and advertisers will be able to bid on search queries for targeted marketing.

"The opportunity is to provide relevant user-centric mobile experiences for U.S. Cellular users," Mr. Johar said.

Meanwhile, JumpTap's office in Stockholm will serve clients such as TeliaSonera and the Madrid outpost will help Telefonica Spain with on-portal search and display advertising.

TeliaSonera is also using JumpTap's mobile search and advertising technology in operations across Spain, Denmark, Finland, Estonia and Lithuania.

"What's really important in Spain is that we've got almost a sold-out saturation in terms of ad inventory," Mr. Johar said.

"In Sweden, with TeliaSonera, that is a huge opportunity given the integration of search and advertising," he said. "That enables us to provide a targeted experience for users, so the advertising becomes more of a value exchange than just an ad."

JumpTap claims to reach more than 140 mobile subscribers through its relationship with carriers worldwide. In addition to its new offices in Stockholm and Madrid, JumpTap also has reps in Britain, France, Israel and Argentina to serve clients in those regions.

"It's widely believed that Europe is ahead of the United States in mobile marketing," Mr. Johar said. "I don't know if I 100 percent agree with that.

"I think with 2.7 billion phones worldwide, to look at mobile marketing as U.S.-centric is a big mistake," he said. "I think there's a lot of best practices and learnings we can get from the rest of the world."