This week's announcement from FindWhat is significant in at least two ways. First, and most innovatively, FindWhat has teamed with Ingenio to deliver Par-Per-Call advertising, which works just like traditional Pay-Per-Click except that consumers respond by making a phone call, not clicking to a lnading page. In fact, the advertiser doesn't need any online presence whatsoever. Of secondary importance is the geo-targeting bundled into FindWhat's new service, which allows local merchants to target SEM to their communities (though not as preciesely as in Overture's system) without putting up a Web page. How does it work? Simply expressed, it's call-forwarding with tracking. Consumers call a unique 800 number which forwards to the advertiser's phone. Bravo to FindWhat and Ingenio. They have raised the bar. Local search, local marketing, non-existent barrier to entry.
1. local-i has a similar ppc program.
Posted at 6:05AM on Dec 19th 2005 by peter caputa