Yahoo seeks market research deal

Advertiser News Services

Yahoo! Inc., the most-used Web site for searching the Internet, said it has held talks with 11 marketing-research companies about forming partnerships to sell information about consumers' attitudes.

"In my seven months, we've met with 11 research companies" about possible partnerships, said Gregory Coleman, Yahoo's executive vice president of North American operations. Coleman, who joined Yahoo in April, was speaking at the trade group Interactive Advertising Bureau's annual meeting in New York.

As sales of advertising on Yahoo's Web pages have declined, resulting in four straight quarters of losses, Coleman has tried to develop services to sell advertisers. One of those is market research on the 218 million consumers who visit Yahoo each month.

Yahoo currently generates little revenue from sales of research, Coleman said in an interview. He expects research sales to be one of the company's fastest growing new services for advertisers, though.

Yahoo can research consumers' attitudes by tracking such things as what brand names are most commonly entered as search queries and what products sell best on its shopping Web site, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company has said.