International Barter Corp. in Seattle said that agreements have been reached with five major search engine providers to give IBC the exclusive banner ad for the keyword “barter.”
The search engine providers include Excite, Netscape Netcenter, Webcrawler,
Lycos and Infoseek.
The agreements mean that each time a person searching the Internet via one of
those search engines enters the word barter as their keyword, IBC’s logo,
message and hyperlink will immediately appear on the screen. Spending was not
disclosed.
Said Steven White, president and CEO of IBC: “This exclusive arrangement gives
us an extraordinary advantage in the marketplace. It’s like advertising on all
the main TV networks and not allowing any competition into your target
audience.”
White said he foresees an increasing presence for barter and trade on the
Internet, and is moving into position for IBC to play a major role in this
area of electronic commerce. “IBC is already a profitable company and the Web
will allow us to vastly expand our customer base along with our profits.”