Local search evangelist pushes forward with Adhere. Is it enough?
Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX), the company that helped make domain portfolio sales popular with its purchase of Yun Ye’s portfolio, is moving forward with its local ad plans by integrating two platforms. The company announced today that it is combining its Industry Brains and Enhance pay-per-click services into a new platform called Adhere. The goal is to bring local online advertising to the masses in a simple manner.
It makes sense, but will Marchex be able to pull it off? The domain industry should be hopeful, as Marchex represents one of the true challengers to Yahoo (YHOO) and Google’s (GOOG) duopoly on domain name advertising feeds.
After bottoming out at $7.51 on February 14, shares of Marchex have been on a tear, closing as high as $13.66 last week. This comes during a period of turmoil for many other companies in the domain name industry. Part of the company’s secret is that it has its own ad network and isn’t solely at the mercy of Yahoo to deliver ads.
The company has had execution problems in the past, and many investors have called on it to go with a simple and more profitable domain parking strategy (ala Frank Schilling). But with parking in jeopardy, perhaps Marchex’s heavy infrastructure investment strategy will pay off.
NoDomainsForSale says
With an in-house call center and accomplished sales force targeting both local and national ad buyers, Marchex has a unique and enviable position in the industry.
Their capabilities for incorporating UGC into their destination pages provide a role model for site development. See http://www.90210.com for an example.
Their stock has been massively shorted over the last year. I think Marchex is still hugely undervalued.
They have so much on their plate that they have not made much of an effort to share their platforms with third-party domain owners. The Marchex people who I know do not park their domains at Marchex because the PPC payouts are relatively small.
The way Marchex is putting the pieces of their business together could be reproduced by a new entrant with the drive and capitalization to succeed.