MUMBAI: WPP’s GroupM Entertainment and online major Yahoo! have announced a partnership to help marketers creatively incorporate their brands into original online programming.

The programmes will appear exclusively throughout Yahoo!’s network of media properties including news, sports, finance and entertainment.

GroupM Entertainment Worldwide CEO Peter Tortorici says, “Marketers need big, ground-breaking ideas that engage and delight consumers, and this partnership with Yahoo! will enable them to create unique high value relationships."

GroupM Entertainment and Yahoo! will work together to identify advertisers, develop creative concepts that map media content with an advertiser’s messaging, and produce the content for each programme. Yahoo! will also promote these branded programmes to targeted audiences in channels across its network.

Yahoo! senior VP, North American revenue and market development Joanne Bradford says, "Yahoo! has a keen understanding of what makes our audience click, and this partnership will help advertisers develop deeper connections with our users.

"Furthermore, Yahoo! can continue to build on its successful portfolio of the Internet’s most-watched original programming by tapping into GroupM’s incredible creative development talent."GroupM’s director of digital assets Margaret Clerkin will assist Tortorici in overseeing the company’s involvement, and Erika Nardini, Yahoo!’s vice president of packaging, will be the representative from Yahoo!.

Both GroupM Entertainment and Yahoo! have experience creating and distributing programming that provides proven return on investment for their clients. For example, Yahoo’s TechTicker with Scottrade as the advertiser averages more than 350,000 streams per day. Another Yahoo! show, Sports Minute was developed for client Dunkin’ Donuts and averages 175,000 streams per day.

GroupM Entertainment unit Mindshare Entertainment, meanwhile, created In the Motherhood. This is a series of original webisodes for Mindshare clients Sprint and Unilever’s Suave that was later picked up by ABC Television and developed into the first ever prime time situation comedy to be spun off from an online series developed by a media services agency.