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Ingenio Corporate Backgrounder

Overview

Ingenio, Inc. creates new opportunities for businesses and individuals to maximize the Internet as a commerce vehicle through the power of voice.

Founded

 1999

Employees

 120

V-Commerce Applications

Since its inception, the web has emerged as a powerful forum to market, buy and sell tangible goods. Yet, the backbone of the US economy—70 percent—is driven by service-based businesses. These service providers, be they businesses or individuals, have been slow to adopt the Internet as a mechanism for lead generation, customer acquisition or service delivery. The primary reason is that services, such as tech support or legal consultation, are significantly more difficult to price and sell via the web in real-time, as compared to static retail items like books or digital cameras. For millions of other businesses who transact in the real world - such as plumbers or a mortgage brokers—leveraging the web for lead generation or customer acquisition often remains a mystery as well. Everyone is hungry to tap the millions of consumers searching online, however driving clicks to a website does little for the bottom lines of the majority of US businesses.

Since 1999, Ingenio has pioneered v-commerce applications that bridge this online/offline gap for serviceoriented individuals and businesses looking to harness the Web as a business development vehicle. By integrating the power of a live phone conversation with the reach of the Web, Ingenio makes it possible for anyone with an Internet connection and a phone device to acquire new customers and super-charge their earning power.

Ingenio meets the broad needs of different buyers and sellers across various market segments:

  • Ingenio Pay Per Call® Advertising Network: Individuals and businesses seeking to acquire customer leads from the Web, but actually transact offline at a later time, can tap into Ingenio's industry-leading Pay Per Call Advertising Network. Pioneered by Ingenio in 2004, Pay Per Call is the first pay-for-performance advertising system that delivers phone calls - instead of website clicks - to businesses.
  • Ingenio Live Advice Directories: These Ingenio-powered e-commerce marketplaces enable people to sell their knowledge and expertise online to buyers via real-time phone conversations within topic-specific directories. Ingenio operates the sellers's platform and drives ready-to-buy consumer traffic to registered sellers.
  • Ether®: The newest addition to Ingenio's v-commerce family, Ether enables individuals with their own web traffic to connect with their audiences by phone and manage all facets of a voice-based transaction from their own website or blog. With a distributed approach, Ether empowers people around the world to sell what they say.

Background

 In 1999, the last thing e-commerce executive Scott Faber expected while hailing a New York City cab was to be hit with the idea of a lifetime. During his ride, Faber overheard his cab driver conducting an animated conference call with more than a dozen fellow drivers. At that moment, it struck Faber how critical the telephone—a communication tool long forgotten about in the midst of dot-com hysteria—was for exchanging information and forging meaningful connections. His next thought was, "What would happen if you combine the searching capabilities of the Internet with the person-to-person interaction of the telephone?"

Shortly thereafter, Ingenio was born.

Partners

 AOL, Microsoft, InfoSpace, YELLOWPAGES.com, Interchange Corporation, Jingle Networks/FREE411, Local Matters

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