eBay to acquire mobile advertising firm WHERE (by John Burns)

Online auction site eBay has announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to buy WHERE, a mobile advertising company, to enhance the company's position in local and mobile commerce.

The move, which may be interesting to those using managed emarketing services, happened coincidentally on the same day of the O'Reilly WHERE 2.0 conference in Santa Clara.

Based in Boston, WHERE operates a local mobile discovery application and a location-based advertising network, WHERE Ads, which provide personalised, hyper-local advertising, deals and offers to mobile customers in North America.

Currently, the service has more than 120,000 retailers and brands on its books, and the acquisition is expected to further eBay's aims of moving into the intersection between local and mobile commerce, two trends the company has been focusing on for some time.

Terms of the acquisition, which is expected to close some time in the second quarter of 2011, were not disclosed.

In a blog post, eBay's chief blogger Richard Brewer-Hay said he would be attending the O'Reilly WHERE 2.0 conference, meeting the company's chief innovation officer Mok Oh and live-blogging from Milo.com founder Jack Abraham's speech about the future of shopping.

Mr Brewer-Hay said: "In the case of WHERE, by delivering personalised, hyper-local advertising, offers, and deals to shoppers on their mobile phones, we see a huge opportunity for retailers and brands to reach more buyers, and for consumers to get more choice and value when they shop."

He added: "I'll be most interested to see how eBay integrates PayPal s online payments technology into the WHERE mobile application.

"eBay Inc expects that this integration will allow consumers to find, shop and pay for great local deals anytime, anywhere and help retailers reach local buyers in real-time."

Earlier this month, eBay expanded its instant sale programme to offer customers immediate cash for broken or damaged iPods, iPhones and iPads.