The Forbes article: Search Engines Go Local, offers an overview of the local search scene, and focuses on Ingenio, the company providing the pay-per-call technology for FindWhat’s new service.
Ingenio plans to start a job that Google started but didn’t fully finish. Under Google’s pay-per-click advertising model, advertisers pay only after users have clicked on the ad. Ingenio is going after a model it describes as pay-per-call.
The results, [Marc] Barach [Ingenio’s chief marketing officer] says, are pretty promising. “What we have found so far is that businesses are willing to pay ten times more for leads generated over the phone than for leads generated from a Web site.
Investors in Ingenio include eBay and Vulcan Ventures.