Virgin Media is signing Yahoo! as its exclusive mobile search partner. The deal makes Yahoo!'s mobile search engine oneSearch available to Virgin. The service goes live on December 8 with the relaunch of Virgin's mobile web portal.
The deal marks a wider push by Yahoo! into the mobile search market and will increase mobile ad revenue.From 2009, Virgin and Yahoo! will deliver sponsored search results and sponsored listings through the mobile portal.
The Virgin Mobile portal will relaunch with Virgin Media branding, focusing on music video and games downloads, as well as editorial content in news, sports, music and entertainment.With the release, Virgin will lower the cost of its unlimited mobile web access to GBP0.30 (USD0.44) per-day.
"As handsets get smarter and faster, mobile web usage has increased significantly and more customers than ever are using their handset to connect them to the internet when they're not at home," says Virgin Mobile's MD Graham Oxby. "Our new Virgin Media mobile portal brings the web to consumers' pockets. A great mobile search service is a crucial part of this and by integrating Yahoo! oneSearch into the portal, we are ensuring our customers have all the information they need at their fingertips."
Yahoo! oneSearch is designed to give results based on users' geographical location for topics such as news, football scores or entertainment listings. Answers are grouped and delivered on a single search page. The service also links to other Yahoo! services such as photo-hosting site Flickr and Yahoo! Answers.
The number of UK consumers who search the web with a mobile increased 25% between Q2 and Q3 this year, compared to 3% growth for PC-based internet use, according to Nielsen figures released last week.
While Yahoo!'s online search is losing out to Google, oneSearch is available worldwide through 70 mobile partnerships.
StrategyEye's related companies: Virgin Media, Virgin Group, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Virgin Mobile
