MCN – a company that began by providing a platform for federated mobile search and has since extended its reach to providing a combination PPC content promotion and vertical paid search program – has chalked up another mobile operator win. This time it’s Avea, a newcomer mobile operator in Turkey that counts 11 million subscribers, that has signed up for MCN’s mobile search platform (for its WAP portal – wap.avea.com) for multi-category search. The deal will also see Avea implement allwords, MCN’s vertical paid search program.

But the real news is the traction MCN has built up outside Japan, where the company has quietly launched mobile search and “search merchandizing” with eight major off portal sites and picked up another 50+ content providers for its allwords offer.

By way of background, MCN’s approach to what it calls “search merchandizing” combines MCN’s federated search (delivered via MobileSearch.net, MCN’s white-label search platform) and vertical paid search (delivered through allwords, MCN’s own PPC mobile content promotion program). The aim is to make it easy for users to find content from any source by providing a vertical paid search program that effectively connects users directly with the content item.

Avea is MCN’s first official search+allwords launch outside Japan, soon to be followed by a string of deals that will peg the needle. In fact, MCN CEO Marc Bookman, whom I interviewed during CTIA Wireless, has since revealed to me that the company has several Tier-1 operator deals under its belt (signed but not yet announced), including an impressive win in Europe.

Read Peggy’s entire post at MSearchGroove here:

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