Marco Boerries, senior vice President Connected Life at Yahoo! said:
"This partnership demonstrates Yahoo!'s continued focus on extending our leadership in graphical advertising across multiple platforms. We are excited to work with a global leader such as Vodafone to help us define the emerging world of mobile advertising and create superior experiences that deliver the most value to advertisers and mobile users alike."
Under the terms of the deal, Vodafone customers who agree to accept carefully targeted display ads on their mobile handsets will receive savings on particular services from the mobile network. The scheme is set to commence in the first half of 2007.The deal between Yahoo! and Vodafone comes hot on the heels of Vodafone's announcement that its European operations have seen a £3.3bn loss. But despite the writedown, Vodafone has reported first-half results ahead of market analysts' expectations, with revenues of £15.6bn and organic growth of 4.1%. Nick Read, chief executive of Vodafone UK, commented:
"Since we announced our intention to develop revenue from mobile advertising as part of our mobile strategy unveiled in May, we have carried out extensive customer trials. We will now use the experience to determine with Yahoo! how best to ensure customers, who choose to receive targeted messages, get better value as well as a richer mobile experience. This will also ensure that advertisers are given a compelling proposition."
As Google, Yahoo!'s main competitor in the search engine market, accelerate their plans for developing the mobile web, this move sees Yahoo! in a strong position to regain some of the ground it has lost to the world's leading search engine. Yesterday, Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, claimed that he saw a future in which Google would provide free mobile phones if users agreed to accept certain targeted forms of advertising. Speaking after a speech on business innovation at Stanford University, Schmidt claimed:
"Data should never be held hostage. We might as well get ahead of it before a law gets passed enforcing us to do that."
The deal between Yahoo! and Vodafone promises to widen the mobile search arena, a rapidly developing market in which Google has, up to now, been the highest profile proponent.
