Shares of eBay Inc. rose nearly 10
percent Thursday after America Online Inc. agreed to make it the
top auction site on its superpopular online service.
eBay stock rose by $14.50 to $159.875 after the San Jose,
Calif. company said it would pay AOL $75 million over four years
in a marketing pact that will make it the leading auction site
on AOL, the world's No.1 online service.
Under the deal, AOL will promote eBay as the preferred
auction site for its 16 million subscribers. eBay will in turn
advertise AOL as the preferred online service to its 2.1 million
users.
The agreement is one of a rash of affiliate and joint
marketing pacts between Internet companies intended to attract
more traffic in the increasingly competitive electronic commerce
marketplace.
An AOL spokeswoman declined to comment on whether other Web
auctioneers bid against eBay.
Aside from eBay, AOL also offers the auction services of
OnSale Inc., Bid.Com International Inc. and uBid Inc. in its
shopping area.
Shares of AOL, which Wednesday said it will cut up to 1,000
jobs as part of its Netscape merger, were up around 6 percent or
$7.44 at $125.
Under the expanded marketing deal, eBay will get advertising
and promotion across all AOL U.S. and international services,
which include CompuServe, Netscape's Netcenter Web network and
ICQ, the superpopular messaging service used by 30 million
people.
In addition to the $75 million that eBay will pay AOL,
America Online will get all advertising revenues from the
jointly branded sites that the pact creates.
The sites will show eBay listings, feedback and ratings from
the millions of online auctions that the company holds each
month.