CitySearch Teams with Overture

local search expansion..

[seth_wilde]

Under the deal, Overture ads will appear in categories where CitySearch has available ad inventory, such as home services, professional services and medical specialists. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

[zdnet.com.com...]

[eWhisper]

Good move for CitySearch. Many of the categories I advertise in have no competition at all.

As CitySearch has higher min bids than OV, it will be cheaper for some companies to cancel their CitySearch accounts and just use OV - should be interesting to see how it plays out.

[martinibuster]

Barry Diller (Chief of IAC/CitySearch) has long wanted a search engine partnership. I wonder if there may be a deeper relationship with Yahoo in the future.

Interesting facts:
Both CEOs, Barry Diller (of IAC/CitySearch) and Terry Semel (of Yahoo) are Hollywood backgrounds, so it's not surprising that these two can find common ground for cooperation. IAC has more areas where a partnership could be mutually beneficial:

Real Estate
Ticket purchases
Loans
Matchmaking

[Warren]

That is an interesting fact - I knew the CEO from Yahoo had this background.

With these guys both being from a Hollywood background they understand the power and importance of having a "brand".

[ogletree]

Does this mean that the Google ads are going away? They were a major partner with adsense. They were allowed to show 2 ads. They got different ads with 2 different banners on one page. I wonder how many big players Google will lose. They lost CNN and now CitySearch.

[sidyadav]

Pretty cool info there MB.

I think its a cool deal...even though I have never used CitySearch as I live in a country out of the US - but I guess it would be useful if I visit it sometime :)

Sid

[percentages]

>I wonder if there may be a deeper relationship with Yahoo in the future.

I don't wonder too much....I think it is a sure thing! Timing is the only issue.

Always nice to see that there is still a place for the "old boys club" in the information age ;)