Marchex Goes Mobile

Marchex announced today that it has extended its local advertising strategy to the mobile market, entering into agreements to provide call based advertising services to three leading mobile advertising providers: AdMob, Ringleader Digital and 4INFO.

Marchex’s VoiceStar subsidiary will deliver call tracking services to all three companies, enabling them to validate the effectiveness and return on investment of their mobile advertising networks and provide their advertisers with analytics to help them optimize their mobile advertising campaigns.

Marchex’s call tracking enables mobile advertising providers to: (i) track the calls generated by advertisements on their network, (ii) determine exactly which advertisements delivered the calls, (iii) track and report key information including the duration, time of day and geographic location of callers, and (iv) record the calls. Marchex makes this information available to the mobile advertising provider through its comprehensive reporting interface.

In addition, Marchex will provide pay-per-phone-call services to AdMob, which will enable them to bill advertisers for the phone calls they deliver, which maximizes the value of their advertising inventory.

“Marchex is focused on partnerships with leading aggregators of local advertisers across all channels: online, offline, and mobile,” said John Keister, Marchex President and COO. “We believe that the mobile advertising opportunity is significant and is poised to realize tremendous growth over the next five years. Our call tracking and pay-per-phone-call capabilities provide a significant advantage for Marchex in the mobile search advertising market.”

“We are excited to bring new tools and technologies that will provide our advertising customers with results-focused advertising solutions,” said Omar Hamoui, Founder and CEO AdMob. “By linking the browsing experience of the mobile web with the communications capabilities of mobile phones, AdMob continues to deliver a powerful new tool for advertisers. Marchex’s call-based advertising services and suite of analytic tools enable us to better monetize our inventory and enable our advertisers to maximize the return on investment for their mobile advertising campaigns.”

“It is intuitive for consumers to search for a merchant’s phone number on their mobile device and call the merchant directly with just one click,” said Ari Jacoby, President of Marchex’s VoiceStar division. “It is getting easier for consumers to access a number for pizza delivery, car repair or whatever they need on their mobile device. As this occurs, pay-per-phone-call advertising and call tracking will play increasingly important roles in this mobile advertising ecosystem.”