YHOO MENTIONED IN NEWS.COM ARTICLE:
news.com
Infoseek inks e-commerce
deals
By Tim Clark
Staff Writer, CNET NEWS.COM
March 2, 1998, 6:20 p.m. PT
Infoseek (SEEK) will announce two e-commerce
deals tomorrow, one with Realtor.com and the
other with Microsoft's Expedia travel site.
The search site says the moves signal a more
aggressive Internet commerce strategy. The
company has been viewed as an e-commerce
laggard behind rivals Yahoo and Excite.
"Commerce has become a critical part of what
people expect" from the "portal" mega-sites where
many Internet users first log on to the Net, said
Forrester Research analyst Kate Delhagen.
"Infoseek has definitely been late to the party."
The deal with heavy-hitter Realtor.com is a straight
advertising deal and does not involve revenue
sharing, according to Infoseek chief executive
Harry Motro.
The contract with Expedia, another Web
powerhouse, does include revenue sharing,
however.
Motro declined to say how much revenue the two
deals generate, except to call them "seven-figure
deals." The Expedia partnership is slated for one
year, while the Realtor.com deal is set for two
years.
Realtor.com offers information about more than 1
million new and resale homes as well as various
consumer-oriented tools for making decisions
about buying a home. It is a service of NetSelect,
which calls its site the busiest real estate site on the
Internet. Realtor.com's "Find a Home," "Find a
Realtor," and "Mover's Toolkit" will be available
directly on Infoseek's real estate channel.
Infoseek has largely shunned deals for longer than
12 months, but Motro said the two-year term for
Realtor.com was designed to snare a premium
partner.
The Expedia deal is one of several between
Infoseek and Microsoft, joining Microsoft Investor,
Money Insider, CarPoint, and MSNBC among the
ad and revenue-sharing contracts between the two
companies.
Online travel is a booming area in e-commerce,
with Jupiter Communications estimating that it
makes up half of the spending now on the Internet.
Infoseek has what Motro calls "adver-commerce"
or major sponsorship deals with Auto-By-Tel,
Borders Online for books, CMP Media for its
computer channel, and UPS. |
