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: Sarah Novotny is a contributing editor at Adotas. Sarah grew up in San Jose, California. Her educational and professional career have taken her to both Los Angeles and New York City where she received a B.F.A. from NYU. As a writer, Sarah has free-lanced for various publications focusing primarily on traditional advertising and media reviews. When not writing and editing for Adotas, Sarah is continuing her acting career in various theatrical and film/television productions.

Citysearch

Written on: Feb 13, 2006
Author: Sarah Novotny |
: Share; Citysearch

What they do: As one of the many successful properties owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp., Citysearch provides up-to-date information on businesses including restaurants, professional services, travel organizations, and retail stores. Northeast Regional Sales Director Robert Cullen describes the site as having three purposes: “The largest buyers guide on the web, secondarily a search engine, and a community site.” The site delivers more than one million editorials as well as user ratings and reviews of local businesses.

Who should buy: Citysearch, which draws over 15 million unique users with 100 million page views per month, is both the a leader in in-depth restaurant information online reaching more than a million monthly restaurant goers, and the number three local directory with information available in every domestic zip code. Over 25,000 pay for performance merchants advertise on Citysearch to drive leads to their business, and the site is the destination for over 4 million monthly local searches on Google and Yahoo! Additionally, 87% of CitySearch users have had some college education, and 57% are college or post college graduates.

Format/How much:
Citysearch offers a variety of advertising options including display buttons, banners, and skyscrapers. More importantly, Citysearch offers a unique local Pay For Performance (PFP) service. PFP optimizes clients who pay the site, and the advertiser and Citysearch define a budget that the advertiser will pay for cost per click. The advertiser who pays the most receives the best optimization and is pushed to the top of search list when users type in defined key words. Once the budget is used up, the advertiser drops back down into the larger searchable list until the budget resumes the next month.

Citysearch also offers special sponsorships for its Best of Citysearch (BOC) polls, which occur five times a year in different categories on the site. The Best of Hotels will begin March 3rd when users and vendors vote on their favorite hotels. The site started the year off with Best of Spa & Beauty and Best of Restaurants, Best of Nightlife, and Best of the Year or Shopping will proceed the rest of the year. Sponsorships are also an attractive option as sponsors receive visibility throughout the site on every page.

Average cost for display buttons, banners, and skyscrapers run $12-$20 per thousand based on volume and the number of pages on which the ad runs. Average click rate for PFP is 75 cents, depending on the business.

Contact:
Robert Cullen
Northeast Regional Sales Director
Citysearch
InterActiveCorp
810 7th Avenue
18th Floor
New York, NY 10019
212.329.0560 office
646.251.8057 cell
212.329.0575 fax
rcullen@citysearch.com

Reader Comments.

hi, citysearch has over 15MM UU’s – much more than 8MM! thanks, Lisa

Posted by lisa | 5:41 pm on February 14, 2006.

Tags: Citysearch

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