• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, June 7, 2005

Sponsored links provider FindWhat.com Monday announced plans to bring its five online marketing and e-commerce properties under the new brand name Miva. FindWhat.com, the U.S.-based owner of search marketing firm Espotting, has been planning this re-branding for about nine months, and expects to complete the integration by the end of June.

The firm's subsidiaries will operate under three divisions. Miva Media, formerly the FindWhat.com and Espotting brands, will manage the company's advertising networks as well as all private label initiatives. Miva Small Business, formerly Miva Corporation, will focus on developing integrated marketing and business solutions based on the Miva Merchant e-commerce platform. Meanwhile, Miva Direct, formerly Comet Systems, will focus on helping businesses develop one-to-one relationships with customers by providing desktop consumer software.

Acquisitions of Miva, Espotting, and Comet Systems were all completed over the past 18 months.

The company hopes the initiative will reduce wasted resources due to overlap and inefficiency, Seb Bishop, chief marketing officer at Miva, said.

"I think of my mum--she has a small business--who can now go to one Web site where she can set up her business online, then start receiving targeted leads to her site, as well as other marketing tools that we offer," said Bishop. "Now it's a one-stop-shop."

"As our company moves forward as a multi-dimensional enterprise and as we work to take performance marketing to the next level, we believe 'Miva' better represents our core business vision," Craig Pisaris-Henderson, chairman and CEO of Miva, said in a statement.

The company is planning a six-week marketing campaign that will span the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. Beginning on June 13, a series of ads will appear in The New York Times, AdWeek, MediaWeek, Advertising Age, B-2-B Magazine, and DM News.

The Web site, Miva.com, will not go up until the end of June.

The campaign will have two phases; the first, called "Symbol," illustrates different variations of the new Miva Symbol with the tagline "A change is coming." The MIVA name is not mentioned in these executions, to introduce the new visual and generate intrigue. The second phase, "Miva," will depict the new brand name created from a collage of Espotting logos with the new tagline "Miva Means Business."

Along with a patent dispute with Yahoo!, FindWhat recently announced disappointing first-quarter profits of $3.2 million, or 10 cents per diluted share--down from $3.8 million, or 16 cents per diluted share, in the first quarter of 2004. The company also slashed its annual revenue forecast to between $175 million and $200 million, from $250 million to $270 million.

The company's ticker symbol on NASDAQ will change to "MIVA" on June 13.