• January 5, 2005

Affinity Internet, a Web services provider for small and medium-sized businesses, launched a new version of its ValueTraffic service Wednesday, guaranteeing clients five times more traffic than its basic version.

The new service pairs client businesses with an account manager, who acts as a for-hire marketing department. It promises 50,000 view of or 250 clicks on a client's ad per month. The price tag of the deluxe version is five times bigger than the basic version's as well, costing $500 per month.

The ValueTraffic service does the legwork for small and medium-sized businesses that want to advertise on major search engines like Google and Overture. The staff does the research, chooses the ad placement and buys the space, and provides reports on the performance of the campaign to the clients.

The biggest change between the old and new service is a more aggressive approach on the part of the account managers, each of whom manages about 175 different small and medium-sized business clients. "For our ValueTraffic Deluxe customers, our client liaisons will proactively review every account every week," Affinity Chief Marketing Officer Jim Collins said. "Our account managers will call our customers with suggestions on how to improve their Web sites."

--Shankar Gupta