W3i, a Sartell, Minnesota-based company that delivers integrated desktop and browser marketing services, yesterday announced a global partnership with Yahoo.

In 2004, W3i began offering key services like the Yahoo Toolbar, sponsored search, and contextual advertising services to W3i’s estimated 16.5 million monthly visitors. A company release confirmed W3i is renewing this distribution deal.

W3i launched in 2000 as Freeze.com and changed its name to W3i in January 2007. The company offers free Windows PC downloads: freeze.com (screen savers, wallpaper, and clip art), wallpapers.com (animated, static, and photo-quality wallpapers), screensaver.com (3D and flash screen savers), and my.freeze.com.

When users request a free download from W3i's websites, they may be offered a free-to-download Yahoo toolbar or weather software from WeatherBug, or any of their partners. If they accept, W3i connects them to an ad-sponsored page, and makes money every time they click the Yahoo toolbar, or the ad-supported WeatherBug page, etc.

As online advertisers realize that the branded portal sites like Yahoo or Google never reach 100% of the web audience, they welcome aggregators like W3i who can increase Yahoo's total web audience by downloading Yahoo toolbars, claimed Gerry Kaufhold, analyst with research firm In-Stat in Scottsdale, Arizona.

W3i reportedly had $26.8 million in revenue in 2006, and was projecting $34 million in revenue in 2008, though it wouldn't confirm that number.

W3i joined the Right Media Exchange in June 2008, to leverage the Exchange and optimize its ad impressions and user-acquisition budget.

In November Yahoo launched a beta version of Glue, a program that cobbles together related information from all over the web, much like Wikipedia, except with more media (image and video) capabilities.