E*TRADE Expands Marketing Agreement with Yahoo!

Online brokerage E*TRADE Group Inc. said it expanded its marketing and commerce agreement with Yahoo Inc. and signed an exclusive marketing and content agreement with ZDNet.

E*TRADE, which recently predicted it will lose money through fiscal 1999 as it spends heavily on promotion, said the agreement with Yahoo is expected to substantially increase visibility for E*TRADE within Yahoo Finance.

The agreement includes extensive advertising, sponsorship and promotional programs throughout Yahoo Spending details were not disclosed. As part of the agreement, E*TRADE also is sponsoring two popular areas of Yahoo, Financial News and Insider Trading, as well as renewing its position as one of the premier merchants in Yahoo Finance.

The agreement with ZDNet calls for E*TRADE to be the exclusive provider of online investment tools, including a portfolio manager and E*TRADE’s stock market game, to ZDNet’s customer base. Financial terms were not disclosed.

“These relationships demonstrate E*TRADE’s major commitment to convert a significant portion of the nine million plus individual investors who use the Web to do investment research, but have not yet opened Internet investing accounts,” said Christos M. Cotsakos, E*TRADE’s president and CEO. “This is part of our overall strategy to dramatically increase E*TRADE’s account growth while also showcasing the extensive capabilities of our new public destination site.”

ZDNet also will give E*TRADE exclusive sponsorship and branding on ZDNet’s Quote Lookup and Quotes Results pages, ZD Inter@ctive Investor and ZD Network News.