Yellow Pages Site, Local Online Directory Publisher Team Up

Companies that buy performance-based pay-per-click and pay-per-call advertising on Idearc Media’s Superpages.com can now have their businesses included in Marchex’s local online directories.

Under an agreement announced Monday, the placements will occur through Enhance Interactive, Marchex’s advertising network. Marchex, which is based in Seattle, publishes more than 150,000 local sites that include business listings and customer-written ratings.

“Basically, this is similar to other traffic deals we’ve signed for our performance-based advertisers,” said Robyn Rose, VP of Internet marketing at Dallas-based Idearc. “It’s really about distributing our existing advertisers.”

“Essentially, Marchex has a great network of local sites and a large amount of traffic,” Rose said, adding that Idearc likes to call Superpages “a local search engine with roots in the yellow pages business.” Last July, the company announced an initiative to allow local advertisers to incorporate video in their campaigns.

With its performance-based program, Idearc integrates pay-per-click and pay-per-call into one program. “It’s really about what the advertiser wants to track the leads on, whether it’s clicks or calls,” said Rose. Ad placements on Marchex sites will be based on the companies’ bids and relevancy. Marchex, which has its own group of advertisers, will incorporate the Superpages.com ads to “round out” its sites and make them more robust, explained Rose.

In a statement, Eric Chandler, president of Idearc’s Internet division, said Marchex’s local network is “an excellent source of targeted traffic and broad geographic coverage for Superpages.com’s local advertisers.” Marchex says its local network, which includes sites such as NewYorkDoctors.com and DenverAutoRepair, is used by more than 25 million people monthly.

In research announced yesterday, JupiterResearch found local display and search advertising are leading all online advertising categories in terms of revenue growth. Jupiter predicts local advertising will increase by 13 percent from 2007 to 2012 with local display and search growing the fastest.