Today Yahoo relaunched and rebranded its ad network. The freshly-monikered Yahoo Network purportedly now reaches 80 percent of users in the United Kingdom and Ireland, courtesy of a strategic set of new advertising partners, writes The Guardian.

VP and managing director Mark Rabe of Yahoo sales in the UK and Ireland said the revamped network allows for one point of contact for multi-platform campaigns. Partner sites and Yahoo's own sites, like flickr, are available vehicles for ad coverage.

The Yahoo Network serves 29 million unique users per month across search, display and mobile sites. New partnerships include display ads on Eurosport, BT and UK social networking site Bebo, now owned by AOL. It also made search publishing deals with FT.com, Channel Five and Loot.

Mobile ads will also appear across five major UK carriers: O2, Orange, Vodafone, T-Mobile and 3.

"In the UK, digital accounts for about 20% of the total marketing budget, whereas in most of the world it's an afterthought," said Rabe. "This industry [UK and Ireland] is probably better poised to weather an economic downturn – if it happens and turns out to be prolonged. So far we've done a good job of proving the efficacy of online ads."