Google and Lycos Europe Announce Strategic Alliance

Google’s content-targeted advertising service enables Lycos Europe to monetize Lycos Tripod member pages

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California/GÜTERSLOH, Germany – June 5, 2003 – Google and Lycos Europe today announced an agreement whereby Google will provide relevant content-targeted ads to the member pages of Europe’s largest homepage building community, Lycos Tripod. This agreement extends the reach for Google advertisers to a potential of four million member pages of Lycos Tripod, while enabling Lycos Europe to generate revenue from one of its largest community products. Google’s content-targeted advertising service will begin in the UK and Germany immediately, and will be introduced in France in July and in Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and Sweden in August.

This partnership will leverage Google’s content-targeted advertising to provide relevant text-based ads to users of member pages of Lycos Tripod. The relevancy of the ads is a high priority for both partners. The personal homepages of Lycos Tripod members offer a wide range of topics for Google’s advertisers such as arts, business, hobbies, travelling, games and others. These pages generate approximately 450 million to 500 million page views per month. As soon as a Lycos Tripod member page is viewed, Google’s content-targeted advertising service identifies the meaning of the web page and then automatically serves relevant text-based ads to the viewer on the right side of the page. Google’s large advertiser base enables the company to serve targeted ads for a diverse range of queries without distracting users with unrelated ads.

"Content-targeted advertising builds on Google’s innovative technology for serving keyword-targeted advertisements on search results pages and applies it to the rest of the web," said Omid Kordestani, senior vice president of Worldwide Sales and Field Operations at Google. "Google’s partnership with Lycos Europe, which is our first pan-European strategic partnership for content-targeted advertising, significantly extends the reach of Google’s fast-growing network of European advertisers."

"Because of the relevancy of the presented ads of Google’s content-targeted advertising service we have the opportunity to integrate relevant ads on our popular homepage building community without annoying our members or the visitors of the member pages," said Christoph Mohn, CEO of Lycos Europe. "This way of monetizing our communities helps us to further invest and develop these free services to the benefit of our users."

About Google

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program, which is the largest and fastest growing in the industry, provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.

About Lycos Europe

Lycos Europe (Prime Standard : LCY / Nouveau Marché : 5770) is one of the leading European Internet destinations operating a pan-European network of websites in ten languages. The company’s combination of search, communication services, content channels, Internet access, homepage building and online communities addresses a wide range of target groups. The Lycos Europe Network provides an attractive medium not only for consumers but also for advertisers and e-commerce partners throughout Europe. Every month more than 25 million users visit the Lycos sites in Europe. Today, Lycos Europe generates approximately three billion page views each month. With a network of websites covering Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, Lycos Europe has a large geographical reach in Europe.

For further information please contact:

Google
Nathan Tyler
(650) 623 4311
nate@google.com.

Lycos Europe
Corporate Communications
Ina J. Kruse
+49-5241-80-41290
+49-5241-80-66951
ina.kruse@lycos-europe.com

###

Google is a trademark of Google Technology Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

Labels: ,