Aol deal with citysearch to boost local ads for platform a

"by and large, AOL has not had a local ad sales force," said John Kannapell, SVP for AOL hunt. "This is a way for us to augment advertising chance that reach very local advertisers," he continued.

Starting in March, AOL will integrate Citysearch's user and column reviews, videos, menus and concern listings across its Mapquest pages. The eventual plan is to roll out Citysearch content across AOL's local place, including CityGuide, Local hunt and Moviefone. In add-on to providing more stock list and reach for Citysearch advertisers, the new Citysearch content pages will make for added show and text ad stock list sold by AOL Platform A units including Advertising.com and performance-based contextual ad web Quigo. Citysearch and AOL will share performance-based ad gross according to the understanding.

"This is about [AOL] expression, 'We know we have a lot of consumers looking for local, but maybe we don't want to [hire] a lot of sales reps,' " explained Citysearch CEO Jay Herratti. "They want to be in local, but they don't want to have the substructure it takes to acquire all the merchandiser."

As a consequence of the partnership, Mapquest users might be able to coil over a concern location on a map to view a concern review or really take an action like purchasing something, said Herratti. Targeted Citysearch paid concern listings might also end up aboard maps, for case.

"The scheme of both proprietorship advertising offerings as well as partnerships is the right scheme now," said Kannapell. "We have to find ways to reach a much larger footprint in the U.S." YellowPages.com also distributes its listings on AOL Yellow Pages, giving AOL access to the IYP's local sales force.

According to ComScore, Mapquest reached 24 percent of the U.S. Web population in December 2007, attracting about 43 million unique visitors; however, it's not clear how much ad inventory the relationship might represent when Citysearch content is pushed out across Mapquest and other sections of AOL.

"A lot of it depends on how well we're deployed and how consumer friendly we make it," said Herratti.

Citysearch spent last year building its content through acquisition and partnering. The firm bought reviews-based local search provider Insider Pages in May 2007 and signed a deal with small business marketing and referral platform MerchantCircle in November to cross-promote ad offers and share content.

"AOL to us is really the biggest new partner," Herratti said. "It represents the work we refined over the last year."

Citysearch signed a similar content and ad distribution deal with Local.com in December of last year.