• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 14, 2009

New York Media has partnered with Clickable to add online lead generation to advertising opportunities for prospective and existing brand clients.

Clickable will power leads for New York Media's publications, which will utilize Clickable's core technology for a platform called New York Connects that will provide new customer leads through search engine marketing (SEM). New York Media becomes the first Northeast media sales partner for the platform.

New York Media is the parent company of New York magazine, Menupages, and other Web properties. The publishing house launched New York Connects by white-labeling the Clickable platform. With more consumers turning to the Web to find merchandise from local retailers, ad campaigns work harder to generate phone calls through search marketing. For example, when consumers see an ad in Google search queries for wedding photographers or related services, it uses the "as seen in New York Magazine" brand to promote and increase click to call from the Web to the retail store.

"Most local media companies have yet to get into performance marketing," says Clickable co-founder and CEO David Kidder. "It's not a simple technology. You need a piece of technology that combines search marketing with optimization, landing pages and phone calls that track and direct the lead back to the customer's desktop."

Clickable powers about 2,000 companies and agencies on the platform, but plans to announce two more "significant deals" in the first quarter of 2010.

Today, New York Connects is available for merchants focusing on weddings, a business sector familiar with the "New York" brand through its weddings issues. It's also available to dentists, a group for which there is untapped marketing demand, according to Kidder. Additional categories scheduled for 2010 include spa services, architects, home renovations and interior designers, among others.

Kidder says media companies that want to get into performance marketing can white-label Clickable's technology. Or the company can build on top of Clickable's technology. Some companies, such as those among the Internet 100s focused on real estate or ecommerce, might want to build the entire experience under technology they built for their brands.

In 2010, Kidder says Clickable will focus on product commitment for local businesses, as well as expanding their platform to include managing campaigns on real-time networks. The company is developing experiences for both desktop and mobile devices.