StarMedia & eresMas Form Strategic Partnership.

StarMedia Network and eresMas announced a strategic partnership to integrate, distribute and monetize preferred content via StarMedia.com. By combining StarMedia’s multi-access distribution platform, leading sales force and 35 million unique user base with eresMas’ superior content offerings, the partnership is poised to capitalize on the region’s rapidly expanding market of Internet users. Today’s 22 million US Hispanic and Spanish-speaking Latin American Internet users is projected to grow to over 62 million in 2005.* The integrated vertical portals are expected to be available through StarMedia.com in Spanish-speaking Latin America and the U.S. Hispanic market over the next few months.

Under the terms of the agreement, StarMedia will distribute the content of eresMas throughout Spanish-speaking Latin America and the U.S. Hispanic markets. Eight of the most popular themed vertical portals from eresMas will be integrated into StarMedia.com with topics ranging from music to health and parenting and will complement StarMedia’s vast array of existing content, tools and applications. StarMedia’s sales team will be responsible for selling the advertising for the sites throughout Latin America and in the United States, and both companies will share resulting revenues.

“eresMas’ superior and innovative content offerings will allow us to bolster our product offerings for our Spanish-speaking Latin American and U.S. Hispanic users and generate additional revenue,” said Fernando Espuelas, Chairman and CEO of StarMedia Network. “We are proud that eresMas chose StarMedia to be its first pan-regional distribution partner in Latin America and in the U.S., reinforcing our leading position in the marketplace,” Espuelas said.

“Due to the rapid growth of the Internet in Latin America and the fact that we have such unique offerings in the Spanish language, we look forward to extending the reach of our vertical portals in the Latin American marketplace where StarMedia has such a strong presence and to increasing the traffic generated by our offerings,” said Antonio Anguita, CEO of eresMas. “The partnership with StarMedia will allow us to reach users and potential advertising customers, ensuring our penetration in this market,” Anguita said.

Latin America is considered to be one of the fastest growing Internet regions in the world with a compound annual growth rate of 30% from 21 million at the end of 2000 to approximately 77 million in 2005.*

*Source: Jupiter Research, 02/01