April 7, 2004

FindWhat will offer "Pay Per Call" ads to appear in search and directory result pages for businesses that don't have websites.

In recent years, paid listings have taken an increasing share of online advertisers' budgets, but have not been an option for businesses without a website.

Through the combination of Ingenio's patented technologies with the FindWhat.com Network(TM), non-web-oriented businesses can now take advantage of online, performance-based marketing opportunities. In addition, Pay Per Call(TM) provides current online businesses another advertising vehicle to generate sales, with the actual connection occurring offline, over the phone, directly with the merchant.

Plans call for participating merchants' Pay Per Call ads to appear in search and directory results whenever a consumer conducts a keyword or keyword phrase query, similar to the appearance of current paid listings in the FindWhat.com Network.

The online advertisements will contain special phone numbers, provisioned through the Ingenio Platform, which connect to the merchant's location. A phone call from a prospective customer, as opposed to a click, will become the true billing event.

Under the proposed service, merchants will agree to a Pay Per Call fee based on an open market bidding system, with the top bidder's Pay Per Call ad appearing first, and all others listed in descending order of their bids. This pricing mechanism will allow each merchant to determine how much they wish to pay based on their goals, budget and lifetime value of their customers.

There were approximately 22.9 million small businesses in the U.S. in 2002. Estimates project search revenue to grow from $1.5 to $7.0 billion by 2007, while local search revenue should grow to $2.5 billion by 2008 (Source: US Bancorp Piper Jaffray March 2003 and The Kelsey Group December 2003, respectively).

Local commercial searches - those seeking merchants "near home or work" - represent over 25% of all commercial searches being performed by online buyers.

The Ingenio/JupiterResearch findings (March 2004, 336 businesses) indicate that 48% of small businesses surveyed are very/somewhat interested in using Pay Per Call, and that 40% would be very/somewhat likely to allocate new advertising budget dollars to take advantage of this new product.

Under the terms of the agreement, FindWhat.com plans to incorporate Ingenio's technology, processes and systems to offer the Pay Per Call advertising platform and services to its advertisers, distributed through the FindWhat.com Network. Additionally, FindWhat.com and Ingenio plan to develop and co-market a unified pay-per-click and Pay Per Call solution (PPC2) to companies seeking to utilize both forms of performance-based advertising opportunities.

"FindWhat.com follows a strategic direction of aligning itself with the best-of-the-best - like Ingenio - to develop and provide high quality performance-based marketing and commerce enabling services for businesses to find prospects, get those prospects to become customers, and then keep them through retention-based marketing efforts," said Craig Pisaris-Henderson, chairman and chief executive officer of FindWhat.com.

"Together with Ingenio, our services can offer millions of small-to-medium sized businesses (SMEs) the ability to connect with new customers, through phone calls and/or clicks driven by paid listings on the Internet."

"Industry leaders like FindWhat.com are recognizing the need for different types of advertising solutions. There are many segments of advertisers and merchants in the market; each with their own set of needs. Those companies who are first to deliver products and services to address those needs will benefit most," says Mark Britto, CEO and president of Ingenio.

"We believe online marketing is not just about the technology, it's about rational and measurable customer acquisition... that is why merchants advertise in the first place. Our role is to enable companies to better monetize their paid listings networks while helping merchants to grow their businesses and prosper."

The companies expect the service to launch in Q3 of 2004, as they work to deploy the Ingenio platform through the FindWhat Network.

Source: Yahoo Financial News

        

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