Internet portal player Yahoo is buying Overture Services, which pioneered a pay-for-placement search engine, in a $1.6 billion deal announced Monday.
The deal would further Yahoo"s strategy of moving from being a mainly advertising-supported site - a model that fell apart with the Internet bust - to a more diversified company with several kinds of subscription and ad-based revenue streams.
"Together, the two companies will be able to provide the most compelling and diversified suite of integrated marketing solutions around the globe, including branding, paid placement, graphical ads, text links, multimedia, and contextual advertising," Yahoo chief Terry Semel said in a statement.
Under the system employed by Overture, formerly known as GoTo.com, advertisers bid for the right to have their links displayed under specific search terms. The auction determines the order in which the links are displayed on a Web page.