Press Release: FAST and Espotting Media Strike European Search Distribution Agreement
FAST, a leading developer of search and real-time alert technologies, and Espotting Media, Europe's largest pay-per-click advertising network, today announced a two-part European agreement where Espotting will offer FAST web search results with its paid listings, as well as provide paid listings on AlltheWebô, FAST's showcase site.
Read on for the release in full.
Espotting has chosen to offer FAST's web search results as part of its
total web search solution to affiliate partners. This enables web
destinations and portals to receive an end-to-end search product for their
site consisting of Espotting's paid listings and FAST's web search
results. This provides portals with a high-quality search service that
combines industry leading paid listings and highly relevant web search
results.
"This deal sees two key European search market players joining forces,"
commented Jonathan Bunis, Espotting Media's COO. "Our relationship with
FAST provides benefits to all our partners. Our advertisers benefit
from a significant increase in distribution through AlltheWeb, and our
affiliates can now choose FAST as a web search supplier to complement
their Espotting listings."
One of the first of Espotting's affiliates to take advantage of this
opportunity is O2, which, through their deal with Espotting, will use
FAST as their web search supplier. O2 is Europe's leading mobile Internet
portal.
Under a separate agreement, FAST has chosen Espotting to provide paid
search listings on its popular, award-winning search technology showcase
site, AlltheWeb.com. Under the terms of the agreement, Espotting will
provide their top three paid listings on AlltheWeb's European search
results pages. Espotting's advertisers are now able to benefit from an
additional 120 million leads annually throughout the UK, Germany, France,
Italy, Spain, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Switzerland. The
paid search listings are clearly marked and do not appear in FAST's web
search results.
Espotting currently has over 12,500 advertisers including British
Airways, Orange, eBay, Direct Line and Procter & Gamble, and powers over 700
million search requests each month through its European distribution
network that includes Yahoo! Europe, Lycos Europe, AltaVista, Tiscali,
and Ask Jeeves.
"This relationship provides key dividends for both FAST and Espotting,"
added John M. Lervik, chief executive officer of FAST. "We are pleased
to give visibility to our web search results among their partner sites,
while also providing exposure for Espotting's quality paid placement
results through AlltheWeb."
FAST's AlltheWeb delivers highly relevant search results from over 2.1
billion web pages and integrates them with award-winning breaking news
results from thousands of news sources and hundreds of millions of
image, video, MP3, and software files, all within a single search result
page. With advanced linguistics, categorization techniques, and support
for 49 languages, AlltheWeb combines a high quality, comprehensive,
fresh, and fully integrated search resource with the largest and most
up-to-date news resources on the Internet.
About Espotting Media
The Financial Times picked Espotting as one of their Top 50 Creative
Businesses for 2002. Espotting Media is Europe's largest pay-per-click
advertising network. Espotting operates a marketplace where advertisers
bid against each other for prominence within their search listings. The
higher they bid, the higher they are listed. What's more, advertisers
only pay for the traffic they receive ñ it's pay-per-click advertising
that's 100% cost-effective and accountable. Espotting currently has
12,500 advertisers including British Airways, Orange, eBay, Direct Line
and Procter & Gamble.
Espotting is not a destination site or a portal, but a network. They
supply search results to some of the web's leading sites including Yahoo!
Europe, Lycos Europe, AltaVista, Tiscali, Ask Jeeves, and Netscape.
Through its search network Espotting powers over 700 million search
requests each month.
Espotting currently services 8 European territories ñ UK, France,
Germany, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Sweden and Denmark ñ with Norway launching
in Q1 2003. Jupiter MMXI analysts picked Espotting Media as one of their
Top 10 sites for Future Success. www.espotting.com
About FAST
Fast Search & Transfer (FAST) creates the real-time search and filter
technology solutions that are behind the scenes at some of the world's
best known companies with the most demanding search problems. FAST's
flexible and scalable integrated technology platform spans both Internet
and enterprise customers, and elevates search to unprecedented levels.
FAST closes the gap between information and action, connecting people to
the relevant information they seek regardless of medium, in turn
driving revenue and reducing total cost of ownership by effectively
leveraging IT infrastructure for our clients and world-class partners. FAST
search technology is currently deployed by a wide range of global customers
and partners including AT&T, BroadVision, CareerBuilder, Chordiant,
CIGNA, Dell, Eniro (SOL), Freeserve, IBM, InfoSpace, Reed Elsevier
(Scirus.com and Ei), Reuters, T-Online, Terra Lycos, and Tiscali.
FAST has operations in the United States, Europe (Norway, Germany, UK),
and Japan, and is publicly traded under the ticker symbol 'FAST' on the
Oslo Stock Exchange. Please visit www.fastsearch.com for more
information or see FAST in action at our technology showcase www.alltheweb.com.
© 2003 Fast Search & Transfer ASA - Fast Search & Transfer, FAST, and
the FAST four-colored logo are trademarks of Fast Search & Transfer ASA.
All rights reserved. FAST disclaims any proprietary interest in the
marks and names of others. All other trademarks mentioned in this document
are the property of their respective owners.
