Overture Services signed a deal with one of Italy's biggest portals, Libero.it, to provide it with its 'Content Match' advertising solution. Gianluca Carrera, Managing Director of Overture Italy said:

"From the strategic point of view, the partnership with Libero.it is extremely important to us, since it will help us reaching more than 70 percent of Italian Internet users."

Libero.it (which in English means 'Free') is probably the leading free ISP in Italy, but it's now under fire since it decided to start charging for the POP3 email service it provided. Users will be able to freely read and write emails only via its non POP3 online interface, driving lots of traffic to the portal. The deal with Overture will likely prove a smart one, provided many of the existing (now angry) email members keep their email address.