• by Tameka Kee , June 5, 2007

Seattle-based search and media firm Marchex has inked a distribution deal with Yahoo to expand its Enhance Interactive ad network and a partnership with News Corp.'s Fox Latin America Channels to develop a set of Spanish-language Web sites.

Through the Yahoo partnership, advertisers currently using Marchex's pay-per-click engine--such as Netflix, Vonage, and Bloomingdale's--will have access to content providers in Yahoo's extended publisher network.

Marketers with campaigns in Marchex's ad network should benefit from the "increase in premium traffic that this partnership will provide," said Scott Greenberg, senior vice president of advertising services, Marchex.

In addition to increasing the volume of available content--and, consequently, user clicks--Marchex also expects to improve the ROI for its clients' search marketing campaigns by harnessing the geo-targeting capabilities of Yahoo's Panama platform. Advertisers will be able to "geographically define which target market they want to advertise with within our network and choose the price they want to pay," said Greenberg.

Marchex's partnership with Fox Latin America Channels will include a set of Spanish-language Web sites with commercially relevant titles such as cocina.com (kitchen or cook), foto.com (photos), and salud.com (health). The sites will offer monetization through graphical and pay-per-click ads, further expanding the depth of demographically targeted content available to Marchex's client partners.

"The Spanish-language demographic has become increasingly attractive to Internet advertisers," explained Mark Peterson, Marchex's vice president of public relations. With reports of more than 100 million Spanish-speaking users worldwide, the company's addition of editorial and video features such as blogs, forums and photo albums represents "a tremendous opportunity for both the company and our clients," said Peterson.

Together, Marchex's partnerships with Yahoo and Fox highlight tactics that smaller companies can use to gain market share as an alternative to mergers and acquisitions. "Our independence gives advertisers some really unique reasons to work with us," said Peterson. "We have partnerships with every major distribution entity, but we still have our network of more than 31 million unique users who access our Web sites each month."