MasterCard and Yahoo Music are teaming up on a series of marketing ventures to help boost credit card transactions and drive up subscriptions on Yahoo's paid music service.
Kicking
off the partnership is a promotion in which consumers who use MasterCard to buy a one-year subscription to Yahoo Music Unlimited for $59.88 by Oct. 4 will get a second year free.
The
multimillion-dollar deal calls for the card giant and Yahoo Music to develop several more promotions both online and offline over the next two years. Michael Lao, MasterCard's vice president of global
media, said the partnership with Yahoo allows the company to experiment with new marketing and advertising campaigns to learn what works best in digital media.
Last month, MasterCard connected
with Yahoo Travel when the Web portal launched its new Trip Planner feature. Among the related promotions, cardholders get entries for a chance to win 500 round-trip flights to anywhere in the world
with every MasterCard purchase during July and August.
Lao said MasterCard had pursued a smaller-scale promotion with Yahoo Music late last year, offering a month free with each monthly
subscription bought by cardholders. "It was good, but not as compelling as it needed to be, which is why we're putting into place a one-year, buy-one-get-one-free offer," he said. The promotional
offer is touted on a banner on the recently revamped Yahoo Music site and on the "priceless" promotional section on MasterCard's site.