Overture Services, Inc., the provider of Pay-For-Performance search services, yesterday launched its commercial search service in Japan -- the world's second largest Internet market. Building on its
success in the United States and Europe, company officials predict the Asian marketplace will reach more than 87% of Japanese Internet users, making Overture the largest paid search network in Japan.
Overture's Japanese market search listings will be generated by advertisers who bid for placement on keywords relevant to their business. Overture's local editorial team will carefully screen these
listings before they are distributed to the company's affiliate partner network, which includes Yahoo! JAPAN, NTT-X, which operates the "goo" Internet portal, Infoseek Japan and Lycos Japan. In
addition, Overture and MSN agreed in September to an initial test of Overture's search results in Japan.
In a separate announcement, Overture said it received a contract to exclusively provide paid
search listings for three of CNN News Group's Web properties. Financial terms weren't provided.
