AT&T agreed to acquire privately held Ingenio, a start-up based in San Francisco specializing in "Pay Per Call" search technology, for an undisclosed sum. Ingenio's Pay Per Call service is an advertising platform. 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.
AT&T plans to integrate Ingenio's Pay Per Call into its directory service and local search advertising portfolio, including the YELLOWPAGES.COM Network, AT&T Real Yellow Pages and 1-800-Yellow Pages. The company said 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.
http://www.att.com
http://www.ingenio.com
- Ingenio was founded in 1999 and has 120 employees. Investors include Benchmark Capital and the Carlyle Group.
