European Portals On Same Team

Six European portals are banding together to form a pan-European online advertising network, in an effort to ease marketers’ efforts to tap into the continent’s diverse markets.

The alliance consists of Wanadoo, which covers France, Spain and the Netherlands; Freeserve, which is part of the Wanadoo group and covers the United Kingdom; Libero, which is in Italy; and Web.de, which serves Germany.

The group released a statement saying it had already signed several “major deals” but declined to elaborate. The portals say that, combined, they give advertisers access to 30 million unique users and 2 billion page views per month. They described their reach as “very high” but didn’t release exact numbers.

“The network answers customer demand for a powerful pan-European resource and reflects the increase in online advertising spend across Europe,” the statement said. “Its structure gives a single point of contact for the customer and allows fast and flexible country specific consulting with support and implementation across the whole handling process.”

Jupiter Research, which shares a parent company with this publication, forecasts that total Internet advertising revenues in Europe will grow to 4 billion euros, or $4.8 billion, in 2008, representing 4.5 percent of total ad spending. Web media buys are expected to account for three quarters of total online ad revenue, according to Jupiter.