• by Ken Liebeskind , June 22, 2001

Last month, MSN made news with its switcher advertising campaign aimed at AOL subscribers. Yesterday, it made news again by acquiring Yupi Internet, Inc., a Spanish language website. A co-branded site, YupiMSN.com will soon be launched.

Representatives from the two companies and T1msn, a Mexican portal site that is a one year old joint venture between MSN and Telmex, held a phone conference to announce the acquisition. The companies expressed eagerness about working together and made special mention of the advertising opportunities that will come about through the venture.

Advertisers will be able to market their products in English or Spanish to a Hispanic audience in the U.S., Mexico and Latin America on the T1 and MSNYupi sites. "It delivers a great opportunity to reach that market and do cross media and cross border buys," said Yusuf Mehdi, VP of MSN.

He said different kinds of advertising, including banners and buttons, are available on the sites now, but "we will be developing new types of advertising." He said Yupi brings expertise in this area, but its background in online advertising is unclear.

Mehdi called the deal a "big opportunity for MSN because the U.S. Hispanic market is more of a force. The ability to reach the audience with customized information is a big one."

MSN will combine the services and content of the two sites, including MSN type services like Hotmail and MSN Messenger that are available at T1msn and the entertainment, news, sports and business content from Yupi. The sites have a combined user base of 11 million with T1's based in Mexico and Yupi's across Latin America.

The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The new site will be operated from offices in Miami and Mexico.