Yahoo and 4Info show Twitter the way
Can 27-year-old 4Info founder Zaw Thet's mobile ads keep Yahoo independent and save Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang's job? No. But 4Info can help Yahoo make money texting users with updates from Yahoo news, horoscopes, sports scores and weather forecasts. Today 4Info and Yahoo announced a trial partnership to split revenues earned by ads 4Info will serve against Yahoo content sent via SMS messages to users who have signed up for updates.
Based on previous agreements, the 4Info and Yahoo revenue share will likely be a 60-40 split, with the larger share going to Yahoo if it can sell the ads as part of a online-mobile ad package or, if it can't, 4Info, which will sell the ads through a mobile-ad network. Thet and 4Info already run similar partnerships with Gannett, IAC and NBC Universal. eMarketer expects the mobile-messaging advertising market to reach $1.5 billion in 2008, up 82 percent from last year. It'll grow even more, we've said before, when Twitter decides to hack its user messages down to 120 characters and append its own 40 character ads.