Alibaba Group has combined the operations of its Taobao auction site and Alimama, its online advertising exchange. The Taobao ecosystem encompasses third party service providers in payment, verification, logistics and is China's largest community of online merchants and consumers. Alimama is a network of web publishers and advertisers, serving 3 billion ad impressions that reach 80 million consumers daily.

With the addition of Alimama, the Taobao Ecosystem now includes over 400,000 third-party web publishers that will benefit from participating in China's fast-growing ecommerce market.

Jack Ma, Alibaba Group's Chairman and CEO, said, "With the combination of Taobao and Alimama we are adding strength to strength. There is a lot of synergy between the two businesses that can be unleashed. Sellers on Taobao can now gain added exposure to millions more consumers through Alimama's web publisher partners, while these publishers can tap new revenue sources from among Taobao's merchants. And the real winners of this combination will be Taobao's consumers, a bigger and better Taobao Ecosystem will attract more merchants and bring more choice for consumers."

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