In a move aimed at further extending its Internet presence,
online investing service E*TRADE Group,
Inc. today announced it expanded a marketing and commerce agreement with Yahoo! Inc., and also inked an exclusive marketing and content agreement with ZDNet.
Financial details were not disclosed.
Terms of the Yahoo! agreement include extensive advertising, sponsorship and
promotional programs throughout Yahoo!
Finance and related areas of the Yahoo! network of properties, as well
as a number of targeted marketing and promotional programs.
As part of the agreement, E*TRADE is also sponsoring Yahoo!’s Financial
News and Insider Trading channels, as well as renewing its position as one
of the premier merchants in Yahoo! Finance, the firm said in a statement.
The agreement with ZDNet calls for E*TRADE to be the exclusive provider of
online investment tools, including a portfolio manager and stock market
game, to ZDNet’s customer base. E*TRADE will also have exclusive
sponsorship and branding on ZDNet’s Quote Lookup and Quotes Results pages,
ZD Inter@ctive Investor and ZD Network News. Also, links to E*TRADE will
also be integrated throughout these ZDNet sites, the company said.
“These relationships demonstrate E*TRADE’s major commitment to convert a
significant portion of the nine million plus individual investors who use
the Web to do investment research, but have not yet opened Internet
investing accounts,” said Christos M. Cotsakos, E*TRADE’s president and
CEO. “We will fully leverage the unique and targeted marketing agreements
we have developed with Yahoo! and ZDNet to reach their millions of users of
financial information.”
Cotsakos noted that today’s announcement is part of an overall strategy to
dramatically increase E*TRADE’s account growth while also showcasing the capabilities of its new public destination site.
The move comes on the heels of yesterday’s news that the investment firm expects to suffer losses in the next fiscal year due to increased marketing costs.