Jambo, known for distributing through directories like InfoSpace, will buy remnant ad time from Bid4Spots.com, which aggregates airtime from roughly 2,000 different stations, and arbitraging the space to its clients, which are largely local small and medium-sized merchants. "There's a unique ability to generate calls on radio," said Richard Rosen, Jambo's vice president for business development. "We're opening up a medium that maybe wasn't available to our local merchants before."
Rosen added that local merchants tend to value traditional media ads more than online ones, even though both work on the same pay-per-call model. For instance, he said, he's worked with local service providers who are willing to pay 30 percent more per call for pay-per-call ads that will run on the radio, as opposed to online.
This deal isn't the first time Jambo has arranged to place ads in traditional media. In February, the company began distributing pay-per-call ads in the print publication LA Weekly.