Yahoo Search Marketing has landed a high dollar vertical search partner in WebMD, which will be serving Yahoo sponsored search results across its medical network of WebMD properties including WebMD Health, MedicineNet, eMedicine Health and RxList.
As part of the agreement, WebMD will extend its advertising reach to include WebMD users across Yahoo! properties and services, which is an interesting deal.
What it means is that Yahoo will provide display advertising to WebMD consumer sites. However, WebMD will also show ads sold by its own sales force to visitors of its sites who later go to Yahoo sites, probably filling up Yahoo remnant space. This is a very profile oriented and highly cross targeted campaign for both companies.
Essentially, the addition of the cross platform display advertising deal adds much more dollars and sense to the partnership, giving Yahoo new leverage in display ad and network sales, along with WebMD. It’s also a high profile testing ground for Yahoo as an alternaotve to Google advertising as WebMD used to use Google to serve its search and contextual ads.
With the cross-selling of display advertising, Yahoo is doing something Google cannot offer, and fully leveraging its salesforce and RightMedia acquisiiton to its strategic advantage.
In addition to signing WebMD as a partner, Yahoo has also signed Forbes.com, Cars.com and Ziff Davis Media to agreements which include provisions for cross-selling by Yahoo!’s sales group and the publishers.
“Yahoo! couldn’t be more thrilled to power sponsored search for WebMD’s users. WebMD is the premier destination for health information,” said Todd Teresi, senior vice president of the Yahoo! Publisher Network. “This agreement ushers in a new era of collaboration and value creation for marketers seeking qualified audiences, consumers demanding relevant experiences, and for our collective organizations as we look to build upon our unique strengths.”
