By: E&P Staff Yahoo announced on Tuesday a partnership with AT&T that allows the telecommunications company to sell Yahoo display inventory to local businesses.
The new alliance means that more than 5,000 AT&T sales people have access to Yahoo's APT platform and inventory to sell along with Yellowpages.com.
"Local businesses are looking to drive in-store traffic, and our alliance with AT&T Interactive will help them reach a local audience of highly engaged potential customers on Yahoo," Jim Schinella, senior vice president, North American region at Yahoo, said in a statement. "As local businesses shift their advertising spend to reach the growing number of Internet consumers, AT&T Interactive and Yahoo can equip them with the tools and expertise they need to be successful online."
Indeed, the deal comes as Yahoo's newspaper partners -- more than 800 are involved in the consortium -- roll out the APT platform. The alliance allows newspapers to sell local Yahoo inventory and offer behavior targeting advertising to small and medium sized businesses.
"Our local advertisers are focused on growing their business so they look to us to help find the most comprehensive and effective ways to reach consumers," Matt Crowley, CMO of AT&T Interactive, said in a statement. "Adding Yahoo's reach through highly targeted display advertising enhances our existing portfolio of local advertising products, allows our advertisers another way to raise their visibility and reach more online consumers."
On his blog Content Bridges, Ken Doctor
summed up the Yahoo/AT&T partnership this way: "[The] Yahoo/AT&T deal represents new competition for beleaguered newspaper companies. Once AT&T sales reps got up to speed (and that's certainly an intriguing question, given the newspaper company implementation experience), they'll be competing head-on with newspaper reps."
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