OLX rides on Yahoo's popularity to attract consumers

As per the alliance between Yahoo! and OLX, the Yahoo! India homepage will feature a permanent OLX link.

Yahoo! India has announced an annual advertising partnership with OLX.in, the free online classifieds portal.

As per this partnership, the Yahoo! India homepage will feature a permanent OLX link under the featured partners section, thus directing users to the OLX website. In a move to facilitate the growth and reach of OLX, and to popularise the brand amongst Indian consumers, Yahoo! will also leverage advance display advertising capabilities on its premium media and communication properties.

This seems like a well-calculated move on the part of OLX as Yahoo! India reaches 82.3 per cent of the internet audience in India, according to comScore's September 2011 data. OLX has a strong focus on India, and has launched local language options in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, and Marathi, for users who either prefer to consume local language content, or are not proficient in English.

According to Amarjit Batra, country manager, OLX.in, the alliance will help OLX to increase awareness about the brand's proposition. "India is an important market for OLX. Our association with Yahoo! provides us with an extensive platform to engage with the vast set of untapped consumers across more than 1,000 cities we are present in," he says.

Arun Tadanki, managing director, Yahoo! India, feels that Yahoo!'s advance display advertising solutions and superior targeting capabilities will provide a strategic advantage to OLX's marketing efforts in India. "Yahoo! is best positioned to connect brands with the right target audience. OLX's permanent presence on India's most visited homepage will provide it with access to Yahoo!'s vast reach," he says.

OLX was founded in March 2006, and is privately held. Today, it is used in more than 96 countries in 40 languages. Globally, OLX has more than 155 million unique visitors every month.

OLX.in offers free classifieds in various categories including jobs, for sale, real-estate, vehicles, services, classes, and matrimonials in almost every city in India. The site also offers free mobile apps for Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Nokia, and Windows mobile operating systems for the benefit of on-the-move mobile internet smartphone users.