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London; Wednesday, 12 September 2007: Yahoo! UK & Ireland and Bebo today announced an exclusive strategic partnership consisting of three major components in the areas of display advertising, search including Yahoo! Answers and a branded toolbar.
Under the agreement, Yahoo! will sell the majority of Bebo's display advertising in the UK and Ireland, reaching an estimated 11.6 million users1. This is Yahoo!'s first agreement of its kind with a social networking site and provides its advertisers with substantially improved marketing opportunities, especially in the highly-desirable 13-24 year-old age group.
Advertisers benefit from the partnership by combining Bebo's highly engaged audience with Yahoo!'s insights and advanced audience targeting services to reach consumers with more relevant marketing messages. The two companies' combined audience consumes over 11.7 billion page views a month and represents 75 per cent of the UK Internet user population2.
This partnership will enable Bebo's sales team to deepen its focus on offering sponsorship and engagement marketing solutions, including brand integration in its groundbreaking entertainment properties such as the online drama, KateModern and the recently announced, Sofia's Diary.
The partnership also brings Bebo users the power of Yahoo! Answers – a community-driven knowledge service that has grown to a global audience of 84 million3 and 250 million answers4. Yahoo! Answers will be integrated into Bebo's website, allowing users to ask and answer questions posed by other users within the Bebo community and beyond.
Yahoo! and Bebo have also announced the development of a new Bebo Toolbar that will enable Bebo users to monitor their social network even when they are not on the Bebo website. The average Bebo user spends 38 minutes on the site each day they log on5.
Joanna Shields, president, international at Bebo said:
"Bebo is the number 1 social network in the UK & Ireland and has become the online destination for the elusive 13-24 year-old demographic. The partnership with Yahoo! enables us to focus on custom sponsorship campaigns and groundbreaking original productions with the knowledge that our display advertising is handled by a partner that guarantees the highest quality ad for each user interaction. Yahoo!'s scale, experienced sales force, advertiser relationships and industry leading online advertising capabilities will allow us to do just that."
Toby Coppel, managing director, Yahoo! Europe said:
"This exclusive partnership is the next step of our ongoing strategy to build the largest and most effective online advertising network. Bebo joins our existing partners, Eurosport and Vodafone as part of that ad network, which also includes the BlueLithium publisher network and advanced targeting tools, and the Right Media ad exchange. Working with Bebo gives advertisers the opportunity to reach the important 13-24 year-old age group. The partnership means we can offer Yahoo! Answers and search services to Bebo's highly engaged audience."
Yahoo! and Bebo will begin to roll out the initiatives outlined in the agreement during the 4th quarter of this year. Yahoo! began providing search on Bebo in May this year in a previous deal, which is extended under this new agreement.
According to annual figures released recently by the UK-based Internet Advertising Bureau, the UK online advertising market leads the world for share of advertising spend online with £2 billion spent in 2006. The internet's share of all advertising revenues in the UK is 11.4 per cent, against a global average of currently 5.8 per cent.
Notes to Editors
Bebo is a global social networking website which aims to bring together like minded individuals who are creative, expressive and socially aware. Bebo has a membership of more than 38 million world-wide, with five people register for the site every second*. Bebo ranks as the UK's second most engaging website after Google*.
Bebo won the People's Choice award in the Social Networking category at the 2006 Webby awards and was named as the number one search term in the Year-End Google Zeitgeist 2006.
Bebo was founded in 2005 by Michael and Xochi Birch.
*Source: comScore World Metrix
For more information contact:
Sarah Gavin, Global Communications Director, Bebo, on 020 7478 0303 or
sarah@bebo.com
Andrew Sholl and Claire Thom, Portland for Bebo, on 020 7404 5344 or
andrew.sholl@portlandpr.co.uk
About Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet brand and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide. Yahoo!'s mission is to connect people to their passions, their communities and world's knowledge. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.
For more information contact
Alex Laity, Head of Corporate PR, Yahoo! Europe, on 07918 627821 or
alaity@yahoo-inc.com
Sara Jurkowsky, Hill & Knowlton for Yahoo!, on 020 7973 5970 or
GYahooCorporate@corp.hillandknowlton.com