As Yahoo continues to position a greater share of its business in the mobile space, it has formed another partnership with a major wireless carrier.
On Thursday Yahoo announced that it has signed an exclusive agreement with T-Mobile to provide display advertising on the carrier’s Web ‘n’ Walk Internet service in the United Kingdom.
“We are focused on extending our leadership in both display advertising and in mobile services, and this new partnership demonstrates our continued momentum,” a Yahoo spokesperson wrote in an e-mail to InternetNews.com.
Under the agreement, Yahoo will become the exclusive provider of graphical ads on the T-Mobile Internet service in the U.K. The two companies expect the ads to go live in the first half of this year.
In November 2006, Yahoo brokered a similar ad partnership in the U.K. with Vodafone. Together, the deals give Yahoo exclusive advertising rights to two of Britain’s top five wireless carriers.
The advertising deal is the first major news from Yahoo on the mobile front since the first week of January, when the company outlined several initiatives for enhancing Web content on wireless devices.
The announcement included a mobile-widget program aimed at bringing in more content and Web applications from third parties.
“We’re committed to creating the best and richest mobile experience for all consumers, making it extremely personalized to their individual style and needs while opening up the Yahoo mobile platform to allow anyone to participate,” Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said in his keynote address at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Last March Yahoo signaled its commitment to the wireless market with the launch of the Mobile Publisher Services platform, a suite of services aimed at brokering deals between publishers and advertisers looking to cash in on the fast-growing mobile sector.
Mobile deals don’t end with advertising, however. Yahoo, long hailed as the portal king, has signed numerous agreements with wireless carriers in Europe, Latin America and Asia to make its OneSearch the default home page for subscribers who surf the Web on their handset.
Yahoo does not currently have exclusive advertising or content partnerships with any wireless carrier in the United States, but the company has been working actively with all major providers to stake a claim in the U.S. market.
