LONDON, November 14, 1997 -- Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO - news) the world's leading Internet media company, has appointed Publicis to handle its advertising account across Europe, with sister agency, Optimedia appointed to handle media planning and buying.

In the final round for Yahoo!’s business Publicis/Optimedia won in the face of intense competition from Ogilvy & Mather and CIA.

Joanna Baldwin, Managing Partner of Publicis, said "We identified the excitement and energy of Yahoo! at an early stage and were immensely gratified to be invited to pitch. All our encounters in the meantime have reinforced that view. Yahoo! absolutely fits our desire to be a foremost European company in the promotion of the web as a forceful medium."

Iain Osborne, Marketing Director of Yahoo! Europe, said "Yahoo! has been honoured to have experienced such interest amongst the brightest and savviest advertising agencies in Europe to work on the account. Our need is to build brand affection right across Europe with the maximum of brand consonance and the minimum of fuss. Publicis/Optimedia is supremely well engineered to deliver, with seamless cross border service across Europe, and has deep roots inside the countries."

Osborne continued, "The advertising challenge is to position Yahoo! as a global brand with national product architecture, building global brand campaigns whilst finding the right national tone of voice with the optimum global/national balance of messaging and formatting. We respect Publicis/Optimedia for their advertising craft skills, quality systems and business integrity. They’re also great folks and we’re looking forward to building some fun campaigns."

Publicis and Optimedia will work with Yahoo! Europe from January 1 1998.

In Europe, Yahoo! has ambitious expansion plans. From a base of UK, France and Germany, Yahoo! launched in Sweden, Denmark and Norway last week, with further roll-outs expected in many more European markets throughout 1998. Figures released last Monday show that Yahoo! now has 25 million users world wide and is ranked the No. 1 single largest search and navigational site on the web. Yahoo! also announced that its traffic grew to an average 50 million page views per day during the month of September, compared to the 38 million page views reported during June 1997.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is a global Internet media company that offers a network of branded Web programming that serves millions of users daily. As the first online navigational guide to the Web, www.yahoo.com is the single largest guide in terms of traffic, advertising, household and business user reach, and is one of the most recognised brands associated with the Internet. Yahoo! Inc. provides the targeted Internet resources and communications services for a broad range of audiences based on demographic, key-subject and geographic interests. Yahoo! is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and has European offices in London, Paris and Munich.

SOURCE: Yahoo! Inc.