AT&T Acquires Ingenio And Their Pay-Per-Call Network
Michael Arrington
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We haven’t heard much from Silicon Valley based Ingenio lately. In 2006 the company launched Ether, a service that allows people to charge people for calls. Since then, nada.
But today AT&T is announcing that they’ve acquired the company and plan to integrate it into its directory service and local search advertising portfolio (yellowpages.com, etc.). The Pay Per Call service will allow advertisers to reach potential leads.
Ingenio was founded in 1999. Terms are not being disclosed, although AT&T is saying it expects the deal to close in January 2008.
Looking for a link to the press release. A draft is below.
Press Release
AT&T Agrees to Acquire Ingenio, a Pioneer and Leading Provider of Pay Per Call Search and Directory Solutions
SAN ANTONIO, Nov. 19 — AT&T Inc. announced today that an AT&T subsidiary has agreed to acquire privately held Ingenio, a leading provider of Pay Per Call(R) technology. The transaction is expected to close in early January 2008.
AT&T plans to integrate Ingenio’s Pay Per Call solutions into its directory service and local search advertising portfolio, including the YELLOWPAGES.COM Network, AT&T Real Yellow Pages and 1-800-Yellow Pages. Ingenio’s Pay Per Call service is an advertising platform that allows businesses to manage their ad programs and generate valuable phone leads. The platform uses proprietary technology to provision unique published phone numbers to track calls to businesses generated by those ads, and advertisers’ fees are based on the volume of these leads.
Pay Per Call technology will provide another lead generation tool for advertisers to reach customers. Integrating Ingenio’s Pay Per Call technology will enable AT&T to take advantage of a growing trend toward performance-based advertising. The move also demonstrates AT&T’s commitment to providing advertisers with comprehensive solutions - the addition of Ingenio’s Pay Per Call technology will give advertisers the flexibility to purchase leads in a consistent manner across online, mobile or print media whether or not they have a Web site.
“As advertisers add performance-based advertising to their marketing mix, this investment makes sense for our business,” said Ray Wilkins, AT&T group president-Diversified Business. “Ingenio’s technology will allow AT&T to expand our robust service portfolio for print, online and mobile advertisers, and that will further differentiate us from our competitors.”
Following the closing of the acquisition, Ingenio will be integrated within AT&T’s YELLOWPAGES.COM and will be overseen by Charles Stubbs, president and CEO of YELLOWPAGES.COM. AT&T expects to retain Ingenio’s management team. The transaction is expected to have minimal impact on AT&T’s results, including earnings per share.
“As advertising options continue to evolve and businesses look to additional options, Ingenio’s technology will help us fulfill these needs,” Stubbs said. “Pay Per Call advertising will allow us to serve millions of businesses — those with and without Web sites. We can provide alternatives and additional value to advertisers by adding performance-based solutions to our suite of interactive product offerings.”
“Throughout the past few years, we have built and deployed innovative products that help the services economy flourish online,” said Mark Britto, president and CEO of Ingenio. “What we have lacked, however, is scale — the ability to bring those solutions to the market in the biggest possible way. Our merger with AT&T allows us to bring our innovations to more businesses nationwide.”
“Ingenio’s technology and products deliver an innovative approach for lead generation and help advertisers efficiently place themselves in front of consumers who are ready to act,” Britto said. “Combining Ingenio’s capabilities with AT&T’s resources and YELLOWPAGES.COM’s strong reach and brand is great news for advertisers and creates a foundation to expand this business.”
The addition of Ingenio further enhances AT&T’s portfolio of directory offerings. YELLOWPAGES.COM and AT&T Real Yellow Pages deliver unsurpassed visibility and value to advertisers. AT&T delivers print directories to more than 83 million residences and businesses in 22 states and has a premier online presence nationwide with the YELLOWPAGES.COM Network.
Together, these products receive more than 5 billion consumer searches a year for local business information and provide more than 1 million advertisers with valuable sales leads to help their businesses grow.
AT&T’s YELLOWPAGES.COM also recently expanded its mobile search products with a new Web application for iPhone users, as well as a downloadable local search application that is currently available on 20 popular AT&T handset models. These applications make it easy for consumers to find what they need, when they need it and extend YELLOWPAGES.COM advertisers’ presence to on-the- go consumers.
Note: This AT&T release and other news announcements are available as part of an RSS feed at http://www.att.com/rss.
About AT&T
AT&T Inc. is a premier communications holding company. Its subsidiaries and affiliates, AT&T operating companies, are the providers of AT&T services in the United States and around the world. Among their offerings are the world’s most advanced IP-based business communications services and the nation’s leading wireless, high speed Internet access and voice services. In domestic markets, AT&T is known for the directory publishing and advertising sales leadership of its Yellow Pages and YELLOWPAGES.COM organizations, and the AT&T brand is licensed to innovators in such fields as communications equipment. As part of its three-screen integration strategy, AT&T is expanding its TV entertainment offerings. Additional information about AT&T Inc. and the products and services provided by AT&T subsidiaries and affiliates is available at http://www.att.com/.
(C) 2007 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T, the AT&T logo and all other marks contained herein are trademarks of AT&T Intellectual Property and/or AT&T affiliated companies. For more information, please review this announcement in the AT&T newsroom at http://www.att.com/newsroom.
About YELLOWPAGES.COM
YELLOWPAGES.COM LLC is a subsidiary of AT&T Inc. Formed in late 2004, the company operates a leading IYP and local search site, YELLOWPAGES.COM. The YELLOWPAGES.COM Nationwide Network provides exposure to up to more than 34 million monthly unique visitors (comScore Media Metrix, September 2007).
About Ingenio
Founded in 1999, Ingenio, Inc. the leader in live-search commerce, is helping the services economy flourish online by connecting millions of buyers and sellers around the world. Ingenio applications offer sellers the tools to acquire and monetize customers while providing consumers a means to interact with sellers rather than websites. Ingenio live-search commerce applications include: Pay Per Call(R), a pay-for-performance advertising service that enables the purchase of live customer phone calls generated through Ingenio Inc’s online and mobile search advertising network. Ingenio earn per call applications, Ether(R) and Live Advice, empower live experts to sell their services to individuals seeking real-time, personal and customized answers to their questions. For more information please visit http://www.ingenio.com/.
This is a great acquisition for AT&T. I thought that they were close to acquiring Marchex (Nasdaq:MCHX) before the two companies signed a partnership agreement in October.
Does anyone know what AT&T paid?
When I first heard of Ingenio, I thought it was a pretty neat idea! Lets just see if AT&T took them over for cheap…
I played with Ingenio extensively when I worked at a large auto insurance company. The call volume was pathetic although conversion was okay.
Ingenio really, really needs to expand its network. We got a lot of crap calls from super pages and so on, not the best source of potential customers. But I’d be lying if I said Ingenio made a dent in our sales.
The other problem I had with Ingenio was that call costs frequently maxed out in my vertical at $25/call. That wasn’t the problem; the problem was that Ingenio would charge you for a 10second call which, given that our IVR started with a 45-second legal preamble, simply didn’t qualify in my mind as a billable call. We bitched to Ingenio about this a lot but they refused to do anything about it.
I’ve been following these guys for a couple of years now, the more I look at Ingenio, the less I am impressed. Even Google tried pay-per-call and we participated in their trial too. It didn’t work so good either. I personally think AT&T is blowing its money on this deal.
I’ve used Ether and enjoyed it - though the 15% cut hurt a bit. Saying paypal me money and then call me on the phone generally works better. But whatever.
Ross, did you do ok?
I’m sick and tired of ATT, their tricks, lies, partnering with iTards, low prices, ….
They probably got Ingenio for a dance. Ingenio’s model never materialized plus if I recall they took in lots. lots, lots of VC money early on.
I always thought the leader in the vertical call space was Who’s Calling (acquired by a PE firm for approx $60M).
Today, you can build an Ingenio type network for next to nothing (using Asterisks and EC2). The recipe for success is in the reporting and UI.
I wonder if AT&T is buying all of Ingenio’s assets, which include Keen.com, a place to get online psychic readings over the phone?
I believe AT&T bought all of Ingenio’s assets. Be curious to know how much did AT&T pay to acquire Ingenio. Any word on that yet??
lies lies lies this is all i here. or read.
with $110M into this bad boy and revs nowhere near, this could not have been a win deal for anyone