Overture Breezes Higher on CNN Win

Overture's exclusivity means that CNN won't be using Google's Adwords pay-per-click keyword advertising program, says David Payne, senior vice president of business operations for the CNN News Group. A CNN spokeswoman said an announcement about the provider of nonpaid search results under the new setup would be made within a few weeks.

From a competitive standpoint, Overture was happy to remind the market that CNN's parent company is AOL Time Warner. Overture's shares tanked earlier this year on news that the AOL online service dropped its U.S. affiliation with Overture in favor of Google; meanwhile, Overture has a three-year agreement with AOL covering its European properties.

On Wednesday, Overture announced its ahead-of-schedule launch as a major paid-search provider in Japan. On a more ambiguous note, Overture said Monday that its agreement to provide pay-per-click results for the U.K.'s Freeserve had been "automatically" renewed until February of next year. Overture had been negotiating with Freeserve to extend their partnership, which was set to expire in November; the status and outcome of those negotiations are unknown.

"From a momentum stadnpoint, this has been a great week for us," Demas said.