Seattle-based Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX) has acquired VoiceStar, a provider of call-based advertising services. The acquisition will further improve the thousands of local search portals Marchex runs on its domain names.
Marchex total anticipated investment to acquire VoiceStar will be $28 million, consisting of approximately $20 million in transaction consideration and $8 million in company investment.
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“With the addition of VoiceStar, Marchex offers one of the most comprehensive online advertising platforms and agency services for local advertisers at scale in the industry. We can now offer local aggregators a private label search- and call-based marketing platform with distribution for their advertisements in search engines, vertical Web sites, and on our network of local Web sites,” said Peter Christothoulou, Marchex Chief Strategy Officer. “Additionally, we can now also add proprietary pay-per-phone-call advertising units to our network of local Web sites, which allows us to increase the direct monetization of our own properties.”
(via Press Release)
What generic pay per call or click to call domain names does Marchex own if any?
What type of generic domain names would be a good fit for pay per call and or click to call?
It seems that if pay per call is truly a huge growth area in the next 3 or 4 years that generic domain names associated with this segment would be a good move.
Many of Marchex’s local search domains (i.e. their zip code domains) are eligible for pay-per-call. Therefore, the addition of VoiceStar to their company portfolio has been a smart move, in my opinion, because it will help Marchex optimize the parking performance of their 200,000 domains portfolio. However, the real value in Marchex is the potential of its top generic .com domains, each of which can be developed into a profitable online business.