Thursday March 25 11:49 AM ET
eBay Rises After Inking AOL Deal
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Shares of eBay Inc. rose nearly 10 percent Thursday after America
Online Inc. (NYSE:AOL - news) agreed to make it the top auction site on its superpopular online
service.
eBay stock rose by $14.50 to $159.875 after the San Jose, Calif. company said it would pay
AOL $75 million over four years in a marketing pact that will make it the leading auction site on
AOL, the world's No.1 online service.
Under the deal, AOL will promote eBay as the preferred auction site for its 16 million subscribers.
eBay will in turn advertise AOL as the preferred online service to its 2.1 million users.
The agreement is one of a rash of affiliate and joint marketing pacts between Internet
companies intended to attract more traffic in the increasingly competitive electronic commerce
marketplace.
An AOL spokeswoman declined to comment on whether other Web auctioneers bid against eBay.
Aside from eBay, AOL also offers the auction services of OnSale Inc., Bid.Com International Inc.
and uBid Inc. in its shopping area.
Shares of AOL, which Wednesday said it will cut up to 1,000 jobs as part of its Netscape merger,
were up around 6 percent or $7.44 at $125.
Under the expanded marketing deal, eBay will get advertising and promotion across all AOL U.S.
and international services, which include CompuServe, Netscape's Netcenter Web network and
ICQ, the superpopular messaging service used by 30 million people.
In addition to the $75 million that eBay will pay AOL, America Online will get all advertising
revenues from the jointly branded sites that the pact creates.
The sites will show eBay listings, feedback and ratings from the millions of online auctions that
the company holds each month. |
