BellSouth Signs With Flycast as Local Partner

BellSouth Intelliventures, a provider of online solutions for small businesses in the Southeast, signed with ad network Flycast Communications to allow BellSouth’s local business customers to expand their ads on the Web.

The agreement also launches Flycast’s Local Partner Program, designed to enable results-focused local marketers to better target prospective customers and businesses in specific geographic areas. Financial arrangements were not disclosed.

The agreement gives BellSouth a new option to offer business customers, who can now expand their market presence on the Web through Flycast’s network of more than 500 Web sites. And, the companies said, it gives Flycast a major new sales channel with access to BellSouth’s 1,500-person directory sales force and its relationships with more than 500,000 businesses in the South.

“Leveraging BellSouth’s market clout and sales force sets the stage for continuing the dramatic growth Flycast has been experiencing in recent months as we can now extend our ROI-effective advertising solutions to local as well as national advertisers,” said George Garrick, San Francisco-based Flycast’s president and CEO.

“Through our Internet yellow pages offering, The Real Yellow Pages ONLINE, we currently provide Internet advertising to more than 150,000 businesses throughout the Southeast,” said Mark Stevens, vice president and general manager–Internet Yellow Pages for BellSouth. “We’ve had tremendous success in putting the small business customer on the Internet, and we’re continually looking for ways to add value. The Flycast Network expands our product set and offers our customers the ability to reach local markets quickly and cost-effectively.”

Atlanta-based BellSouth is a $21 billion communications services company providing telecommunications, wireless communications, directory advertising and publishing, cable and digital TV, Internet and information services to nearly 31 million customers in 20 countries worldwide.