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Marchex Buys Pay-Per-Call Firm VoiceStar For $20 Million; Hires Former About.com CEO As Media Head

By Rafat Ali - Thu 09 Aug 2007 03:15 PM PST

Local online media and ad firm Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX) is buying pay-per-call ad tech firm VoiceStar for $20 million, plus $8 million in additional investments through 2008, reports ClickZ. Also, Marchex has hired Bill Day, the founder of About.com and later CEO of WhenU, to lead its consumer-facing media business as chief media officer.

Marchex distributes ads to 100K of its own local and vertical Websites, as well as to over 100 search and vertical network partners...pay-per-call will now be added to the arsenal with this acquisition. More details in its Q2 earnings release.

AP: Marchex, which received about 31 million unique visitors to its Web sites in June, said it may be the primary driver of revenues to Yahoo’s sites by the end of 2009.

Posted in: Advertising, Money, Earnings, VC+M&A

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2 Responses:

From Chris Fri 10 Aug 2007 06:58 AM

marchex investing idea

From Dave Mon 13 Aug 2007 02:26 PM

Congratulations to Ari on his hard work and on a nice exit with Marchex. Marchex’s display of commitment to PPCall gives further encouragement other self-funded pay-per-call pioneers such as we at http://www.ZiffLeads.com (launched in 2005) of SPG Solutions.

We have built from scratch a comprehensive and proprietary pay-per-call ad platform and network, a large direct advertiser base, and a substantial multi-media publisher network.

With triple-digit quarterly growth, expected revenue this year of well over 3X that of VoiceStar’s and the turning of a significant profit, our excitement for the PPCall opportunity only continues to grow.