NineMSN partners with Overture

NineMSN will start listing Overture's auctioned-based pay-per-click advertisements across all of its Web properties in 10 days.

NineMSN CEO, Martin Hoffman, said that the deal would play an important role in bringing interest in Australia's search industry in line with markets such as the United States where industry revenues are expected to grow to US$1.9 billion by 2007.

According to Hoffman, Australia has only just started getting interested in search advertising.

"This announcement between [NineMSN] and Overture is one of the first steps towards seeing that boom in the [Australian] industry and I think there'll be very strong growth over the next year in search advertising," said Hoffman.

Overture, currently the largest paid search provider in the global market, entered the Australian market three months ago. In February, Overture Australia managing director Mel Bohse said the company had a rough target to extend its network of partners to reach 80 percent of the Australian search market.

Today Bohse said Overture Australia currently reaches 70 percent of the market and that she would be satisfied if this deal helped push the final ten percent it needs to reach its target.

Some industry observers, however, question Overture's bullish targets and are asking where that market share would come from. Overture Australia's largest partners include Yahoo!, AltaVista and Anzwers.

Scepticism remains that the combined market reach of other major players such as Google and LookSmart (now owned by Telstra subsidiary Sensis) would drop below 20 percent.