December 4, 2003

Espotting, the European search marketing network, has landed a pan-European distribution deal with Lastminute.com to provide the online travel firm with paid listings across five countries.

Under the agreement, Lastminute will include Espotting's listings on the exit pages of its four channels: 'hotels, 'flights', 'holidays' and the new 'flight+hotel' dynamic packaging functionality. The deal covers all four channels in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy, but is already live on the UK hotels pages.

A lastminute.com branded pop-under page will be served to users leaving the hotels channel of the site without making a booking, and will display Espotting's top five keyword specific listings to the corresponding channel. For example, the channel 'hotels' will feature 'hotels' and 'cheap hotels'. Espotting said that its dedicated content editors have worked with Lastminute to select the relevant keywords.

The deal comes less than a month after Espotting inked a major distribution contract with ITV to provide paid listings and contextual advertising across the broadcasters entire network of websites, ousting rival Overture.

Despite facing increased competition in Europe from Google and Overture, Espotting recently announced that it grew the number of advertisers on its network from 16,000 to 20,000 during the third quarter, and generated more than 1bn queries from users.

The company is currently renegotiating a deal to merge with US firm FindWhat.com, which would expand its presence outside Europe.

Source: Net Imperative

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