Overture to create 200 new jobs

THE internet search engine firm Overture will create up to 200 new jobs in Dublin, where it is locating its European head office.

The American firm confirmed yesterday that it would build a multi-lingual customer support centre and a financial shared services centre at East Point Business Park in the city, initially with 100 customer services employees, but they hope to increase this up to 200 over five years.

Overture expects to increase its European sales significantly in the coming years and the Dublin centre will play a key strategic role in achieving this. Overture has been hosting its European search services from a separate data centre in Dublin for the past two years, on an outsource basis. The data centre also acts as a backup to the US serving infrastructure if required.

Overture is the second search engine to come to Ireland in the past month, following market leader Google’s decision to come to Ireland. Google’s new centre will serve Europe, the Middle East and Africa and will be mainly responsible for administration, legal and service functions.

Tánaiste Mary Harney said the investment is a boost for the Government’s strategy to make Ireland a leading player in the digital media industry and will strengthen our standing as a prime location for global internet services.

“The investment made by the State and the private sector in Ireland over the past three years in global connectivity and state-of-the-art technical infrastructure is providing global digital media companies, such as Overture, with the environment they need to establish and develop their businesses into the future,” she added.

Nick Hynes, president and managing director of Overture Europe, said Ireland was the ideal location as the international nature of the employment market provided Overture with an excellent opportunity to better serve advertisers and affiliate partners overseas.

At the Dublin Search Services Centre about 70% of the employees will work in content editing, where they will ensure that sponsored listings are relevant to the search terms chosen by the advertiser. Overture’s revenues come from allowing advertisers to get listed on search results when users do a word search. The company says its expects to have revenues of $1 billion this year.

The investment was also given the thumbs up by IT lobby group ICT Ireland. ICT Ireland also welcomed yesterday’s announcement. “This confirms that Ireland remains a favourable location of choice for foreign direct investment (FDI) despite increasing competition from emerging economies.

“Taken in conjunction with the recent announcement by Google it is clear that Ireland is now positioning itself as a major world player in search engine services,” its director Brendan Butler said.