Yahoo and Telemundo Tie Up for Spanish Site

Yahoo is merging its Spanish language site, Yahoo en español, with NBC Universal’s Telemundo.com to create a more potent Hispanic portal at telemundo.yahoo.com.

The new offering will combine Telemundo’s broadcast telenovelas, sports programming and other original content with Yahoo’s strength in services, including messaging, search and community features.

The venture will aggregate 11.5 million monthly uniques, according to the companies, a larger U.S. Hispanic audience than has previously existed online.

“This exciting and historic integration between these two powerful Internet entities will afford advertisers a more powerful platform and a competitive marketing edge to reach a gargantuan audience that has been relatively untapped,” said Keith Turner, president of NBC Universal Sales and Marketing, in a statement.

The two companies will combine their staff and split ad revenue earned from the portal, which will eventually replace existing Web sites at espanol.yahoo.com and telemundo.com. So far, the integration only consists of shared branding on the front page of both sites. The merger will be implemented in phases over the course of several months.

The deal involved no equity investment from either partner.

Sales efforts will be led by Luis Romero, formerly of Univision Online. Univision has unitl now been the dominant U.S. Hispanic portal.

The move fits with comments Yahoo Media head Lloyd Braun made two months ago to the effect the company would move away from developing original shows for the Web, but rather would partner with owners of existing content.