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Since
then Marchex has tried several ways to
best monetize their domain assets (which
have grown to approximately a quarter
of a million names today) and along
the way the cash flow from their domains
gave them funds they used to branch into
new areas including pay per
call (rather than pay per click), call
analytics and mobile marketing.
With
the advent of the iPhone and explosion
of cell phone use in general those
three areas became the company's most
important growth centers and today
accounts for more than 80% of
Marchex's business with the company
recently hitting $120 million in
annualized revenue from those
categories. Marchex CEO Russell
Horowitz said, "Our
company is the largest mobile
advertising company few have heard of.
But most important, it’s driving
better |
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advertiser ROI than
any other mobile business." Details about
this key component of the Marchex
strategy are in a new 16-page Marchex
Summary (.pdf file) that the
company released today.
In
a phone interview Wednesday Horowitz told me the rapid growth of
its call/mobile advertising platform
resulted in the company becoming a kind
of "half man, half beast"
with the domain assets not getting
the attention they deserved due to
the company's focus on its new profit
centers. So, after a
strategic review, management decided to spin
the domain assets off in a new
company called Archeo - a move
that was announced after the stock
market closed this afternoon. Horowitz
said that the spin off of Archeo (whose
goal is to "develop the
industry’s most dynamic domain and
advertising marketplace") will
help Marchex unlock maximum value
from each side.
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Horowitz
will remain as Marchex CEO and
also serve as Chairman at Archeo,
but he said an entirely new
management team will be
hired to run that company.
Horowitz said he believed the
assets going to Archeo are worth
nine figures based on the
fact that Marchex raked in
$30 million for a tiny
fraction of their portfolio
- a few hundred names that have
been sold over the past three
and a half years - names that
Horowitz said were neither core
assets nor the best domains in
the Marchex portfolio. Horowitz
added that the company has
turned down seven-figure offers
on several domains it continues
to own. |
Image
from Bigstock
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In a
release of new information that
will be of special interest to
domain investors, Marchex underscored
the point above by publishing, for the
first time, the prices they received
for their top 500 domain sales.
More than a dozen of those went for
prices ranging from $200,000 to $700,000
as shown below:
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Norwegian.com
Exterminator.com
Vuelos.com
LocalDeals.com
Matrimony.com
BlockParty.com
NA.com |
$700,000
$520,000
$500,775
$500,000
$500,000
$300,000
$275,000 |
Giggle.com
UniversalSports.com
CalorieCount.com
Dominio.com
FreeScore.com
MyEducation.com
FreeScores.com |
$250,000
$250,000
$250,000
$250,000
$200,000
$200,000
$200,000 |
The Marchex
sales list included 35 more
six-figure sales. You can see the
complete list of their 500
largest sales here (.pdf
file).
With Archeo
the
company plans to be involved in domain
sales, monetization and development
saying:
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We
will take a build or partner
approach to develop businesses
complementary to our vertical focus
and expand our strategic domain
sales support efforts. This
includes entering the buy-now
market where we did not previously
participate.
-
Our
premium vertical PPC product
will focus on innovative new
features and entering new verticals.
-
Our
unique and highly valuable domain
portfolio and history in performance
advertising provides a limitless
ability to build new businesses.
For further
details, see a tidy summary - in bullet
points - of the Marchex Story,
tracing the company's evolution, and the
Birth of Archeo in this two-page Word
document. |
