• by Shankar Gupta , July 25, 2006

After acquiring local business search engine Open List earlier this year, Marchex and subsidiary Industry Brains, which powers contextual pay-per-click links, have launched an advertising offering on the site. The new feature allows marketers to bid to have their ads appear when consumers search Open List's specific local business categories.

"This represents the integration of our products," said Peter Christothoulou, Marchex's chief strategy officer. "We're able to now extend Industry Brains' platform onto our own proprietary site and offer advertisers really focused local content." Industry Brains' advertisers' spots went live on Open List last week, he said, and the integration will continue over the coming months.

According to Christothoulou, the next step in Marchex's integration of its properties is to mesh Open List content with Marchex's portfolio of domain parking sites, including local zip codes, and other product and local categories.

Open List's local content will be integrated into Marchex's local domains, which already host ads from local advertisers. "Our advertisers are integrated on a lot of our domain sites now through our other search marketing services," he said. "This really offers advertisers something more site-specific or category-specific."

Industry Brains will within this year begin offering an intergrating advertising package, Christothoulou said, with category bidding on Open List, and associated keyword purchases on Marchex's domain name portfolio.