Yahoo! has acquired the rights to sell online-video and display advertisements for the Web portal of Comcast Corporation. The deal was finalized on Monday. This is significant for Yahoo! as Comcast is the largest pay-television service provider in the country.

For quite some time now, speculations were going on in the industry about who is going to work with Comcast. Now the picture is clear. Yahoo! will sell 80 % of the advertisements for the Comcast web portal. The financial details were not disclosed.

Comcast will soon start an online entertainment web site, Fancast.com. The website will have contents from News Corp. (NWS) and other leading media companies. However, this website is not a part of the present partnership. Yahoo!'s strengthening position in Internet-display advertising is confirmed by this deal. Comcast is yet to decide on a partner for its online search services pending the expiry of an agreement with Google.

Many companies like eBay Inc. (EBAY), Viacom Inc. (VIA) and major U.S. newspaper publishers have already given their consents to Yahoo! to sell ads on their web sites. Yahoo! is building partnerships which might strengthen its position in the long run.