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The agreement will see SO selling advertising and marketing programmes aimed at reaching the 50 percent of Irish Internet users who log onto Yahoo each month.
SO is the brainchild of Simon Ferguson, who was previously Business Development Manager with beleaguered advertising agency Ican. Ferguson left that company last August to set up SO with his wife, who will act as Finance Director.
Ican dropped the Yahoo account earlier this year, as part of a strategy re-focus engineered by then Managing Director Aileen O'Toole. O'Toole resigned her position after just three weeks.
Yahoo's move to SO has angered some members of the advertising industry, however, who say they were not even invited to tender for the account. Yahoo maintains that SO was appointed on the basis of the experience of its key personnel and its vision for the future of Yahoo in Ireland.
"To complement our ever increasing popularity here we are pleased to have SO on board to assist advertisers in targeting specific Irish on-line audiences," said Lee Thompson, Sales Director of Yahoo UK and Ireland.
Yahoo expects on-line sales in the e-commerce sector in Ireland to increase significantly.
Ferguson says the SO network will focus exclusively on Web sites and will service three main areas: advertisers who are looking to acquire customers on the Web; advertising agencies which want to reach Internet users; and Web sites which want to increase revenues.
"There's a huge market there. I'm aiming to take at least a 20 percent share of the on-line advertising media by the end of year one," said Ferguson.
Ferguson added that he thinks a recent survey by Ican and Amarach Consulting, which valued the market at IEP15.1 million was a little over-ambitious.
"I think it would be less. I don't see it as being IEP15.1 million. Although it was a pretty in-depth survey, the sample size wasn't huge," said Ferguson.
SO will now come into direct competition with Rondomondo, the Eircom-owned agency, but Ferguson said there are significant differences between the companies.
"Rondomondo is a good company, but it wouldn't necessarily be a dedicated sales network. It does a great job, however. I would have been its largest customer at Ican, and hopefully Ican will now be my largest customer," said Ferguson.
The network is hoping to expand its staff from two to six by the middle of next year, and has already got private investment in place. Ferguson said he will be announcing new clients on a fortnightly basis for the next few weeks.
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