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Nov. 23, 2007

Phone carrier giant AT&T is planning to acquire online advertising firm Ingenio for an undisclosed amount.

The move is designed to place AT&T in direct competition with Google and other Internet advertisement providers.

Overall, Ingenio's ad technology measures the effectiveness of advertisements by tracking specific phone calls made to businesses based on phone numbers used in certain online ads.

The advertisements can be displayed on the Internet, on mobile phone Web sites and even in print.

Ingenio's technology provisions the phone numbers and tracks all the incoming phone calls. Online advertisers pay based on the volume of phone calls generated by all those ads.

AT&T wants to integrate the technology into its own YellowPages.com Web site. The phone carrier said the technology would allow it to take full advantage of the trend toward performance-based advertising.

Ingenio is promoting the fact that advertisers don't need their own Web sites to use its listing service. The ads appear across Ingenio's network and point viewers to the phone number, not necessarily to a Web page.

AOL is also using Ingenio's technology for pay-per-call ads, and MSN uses it for ads displayed to mobile phone users.

The operators of online advertising platforms, including Google and Yahoo, are increasingly looking for ways to display more targeted ads and improve the usage of those ads.

As an example, some Internet marketers are experimenting with advertisements that let mobile users click on the ad and then automatically call the advertiser.

Turning back to the acquisition, AT&T was quick to point out that it plans to keep all of Ingenio's current management team.

Ingenio's Web site says it has 120 employees in total. AT&T expects the deal to close in the first quarter of 2008.

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Source: Wireless Week