Marchex Unveils ‘AdHere’ Network

Marchex has been a company that most people have not really understood. With a broad but seemingly independent collection of assets, including VoiceStar, OpenList, IndustryBrains, TrafficLeader, Enhance Interactive and its portfolio of local-vertical domains people have not known precisely where the company was going and what it was up to.

Marchex has sought to change all that by bringing together all those components into an single ad network under the brand “AdHere.” The network is performance-based and directed toward both national brands and SMBs. The slogan is “National Presence, Local Impact.” Advertisers may target by site, category and/or keyword.

The theme of this initiative is exactly right: trying to carry the consumer through the entire funnel, from awareness to local store/distributor purchase (offline). The “purchase funnel” is largely a fiction but if it were as coherent as the name suggests it would look like this:

Marchex is also trying to bring a higher level of service to advertisers through this network. AdHere now joins a range of other “local networks” in the market (not in rank order):

• Yahoo! Network (via its own vertical and local properties and newspaper partners)
• Google Ad Network (with geotargeting)
• Centro (not a network per se but looks like one from the outside)
• Quigo (AOL) has lots of local distribution among partner sites
• Real Cities Network
• NNN
• Internet Broadcasting
• MediaSpan

AdHere helps Marchex simplify its messaging and comes at a time when marketers and manufacturers are starting to clue in to the value of the local online marketplace and its ability to drive offline transcations.