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FindWhat.com
- a leading performance-based marketing company focused on delivering high ROI to its
advertisers
Technology
Computer Services
(NASD: FWHT)
FindWhat.com
Craig Pisaris-Henderson
Chairman, President and
Chief Executive Officer
Interview conducted by:
Lynn Fosse
Editor
CEOCFOinterviews.com
February 2002
FindWhat.com was formally incorporated in 1998 by the
principals of BeFirst Internet Corp., a New York-based Internet marketing agency, and
officially launched in September 1999. FindWhat.com offers performance-based marketing
services, giving better solutions: to advertisers seeking to be found amongst the
increasing clutter of advertising on the Internet, to web "surfers" trying to
quickly access specific information, and to partner websites who use FindWhat.com keyword
ads as content on their websites. They offer a lean-and-mean marketing service with no
clutter, redundant information, or wasted space. That translates into highly qualified
traffic delivered to advertisers’ websites, fast and relevant searches for Internet
users, and a revenue stream for partners’ websites. When asked what FindWhat.com is
doing that their competitors aren’t, CEO, Craig
Pisaris-Henderson, responded, “Delivering high quality
traffic and a great ROI! That is the simplest way that I can put it. What you find in the
marketplace is that advertisers have wanted one thing—they want people who are going
to buy their product and service to find their website. Now as much as that sounds like
common sense, that is really the “truth” that we have operated our business on,
and this approach has put us in a position to be successful. Our performance-based service
introduces people that want to buy a product or service directly to the people who are
selling the product or service. It puts us in a position to deliver a high return on
investments to advertisers because we are delivering those targeted clients that they are
looking for directly to the advertisers’ websites.” On how they can
verify the value of their product offering to advertisers, Mr.
Pisaris-Henderson says, “What we have realized is that
all of our advertisers are looking for a return on their investment. If they are
getting clicks that are not converting into sales, they will not continue to spend money
with the company delivering the ineffective traffic. So, over the past three or four
years, we have been developing and improving back-end processes that discern whether a
click that is being generated on the Internet is a legitimate click for the advertiser.
A legitimate click is one that is sending an Internet user that could potentially
buy something to an advertiser’s website.”
Mr. Pisaris-Henderson, commenting on how FindWhat.com was
started states, “We started with a very strong foundation and a
business that was acutely focused on profitability—we had to make every dollar count.
The result of that is what you see in our financials today. FindWhat.com has increased
revenue sequentially for 12 consecutive quarters, increased pre-tax diluted EPS
sequentially for six consecutive quarters, and has given guidance of year-over-year
revenue increase of over 100% in one of the toughest economic environments in recent
history.
We are definitely not the ‘normal’ NASDAQ traded Internet company primarily
because we built a viable business model first, and utilized technology effectively to
support the business, as opposed to having one of those good technology ideas and trying
to build a business around it later.”
Pointing to what differentiates FindWhat.com from the competition, Mr.
Pisaris-Henderson says, “We believe that, over time, not
only are we going to continue to be the dominant player at the lower levels, but now we
also have a product that is going to allow us to participate in the top-tier. We are a
very different company than that of Overture and Google, and our foundation is very
different. As of now, both Overture and Google are heavily dependent on those exclusive
top-tier distribution partners. In fact, it has been reported that 63% of Overture’s
revenue comes from two distribution partners. Losing either partner would significantly
decrease the value proposition that Overture offers to advertisers or Wall Street
investors. We find that not only are we not dependent on the top-tier players, but now we
are actually becoming an integral part of their business because we are actually putting
them in business for themselves. We believe we are seriously changing the rules of the
game and the make-up of our industry sector over 2003-2004, with our new private label
product.”
Performance-Driven Marketing™
The challenge for business managers is to find effective ways of driving qualified traffic
to their websites. The FindWhat.com system allows website owners to choose the most
relevant keywords and keyword phrases pertaining to their particular products or services
to create keyword-targeted ads, thus enabling them to reach their targeted customers more
quickly and effectively. Advertisers are only charged for actual clicks, or traffic, which
come to their site. They determine the per-click fee they will pay for their
advertisements, which FindWhat.com and its private-label partners such as Terra Lycos's
Lycos.com and HotBot distribute to tens of millions of Internet users. The FindWhat.com
network alone includes hundreds of distribution partners, including search engines such as
CNET's Search.com, Excite, Webcrawler, NBCi, MetaCrawler, Dogpile, and Go2Net.
Pay For Placement™ technology:
FindWhat.com uses a proprietary Pay For Placement™ technology with keyword ads ranked
based upon an open bidding system, where each advertiser can bid a higher click-through
fee in order for their message to be closer to the top of the FindWhat.com results. The
highest bidder's site appears first, with others ranked below, in descending order of
their bids. Online advertisers can regulate their traffic by changing this amount in real
time using our proprietary open and automated bidding process. And, at any time, an
advertiser can pick their desired position within the FindWhat.com results by changing
their bid price as necessary to obtain that position.
Private Label Service:
FindWhat.com has developed a turnkey solution for leading Internet portals and services
desiring to enter the pay-per-click advertising sector. By providing their own branded
service rather than selecting an exclusive third-party provider, these sites will be able
to take advantage of cross-selling opportunities, increasing their revenue potential. They
can offer keyword-targeted advertisements - the fastest growing online advertising service
- to their existing advertising clients, and use their branded service to attract
thousands of new clients, specifically small to midsize advertisers previously too small
for leading Internet sites to target. By contracting with FindWhat.com, they avoid the
complexities, resources and costs of developing and maintaining a best-of-breed,
performance-based marketing solution themselves.
The turnkey solution is comprised of infrastructure
and hosting, with seamless integration to support the paid advertising service, including
customer service, relevancy screening, receivables management, and all other features and
functionality currently available with FindWhat.com, coupled with a hosted control panel
for partner reports and administration utilities. Private label partners also benefit from
the continuing product development and new features offered by FindWhat.com.
FindWhat.com
To
find out more about: FindWhat.com,
you may order the complete text of our
interview. To
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