Back Domain Parking Service — Marchex Scales
Sitebox rapidly scaling down as it is no longer strategic to firm.
Local search and advertising firm Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX) is scaling down its third party domain name parking service Sitebox. Firm executives believe the service is no longer strategic to the firm.
Sitebox produced revenues of $5 million in the first half of the year, but less than $1.5 million in the third quarter. The firm expects revenues to drop further to $0.5 million in the fourth quarter.
During the firm’s latest investor conference call, Marchex CEO Russell Horowitz stated focusing on premium content partners and its own traffic sources provides greater relevance to its advertisers:
With Sitebox, we viewed that as a potential opportunity to focus on third-party geo domain owners. What we have found is working with premium publishers and our own traffic sources and websites gives us a greater degree of ensuring relevance to advertisers, and so that transition didn’t necessarily happen in the manner that we thought it might. And with that in mind, recognizing we’ve got no shortages of opportunities that we think can drive real equity value creation, we went ahead and made the decision to focus those resources in these other areas. We have greater control for these relationships.
Sitebox is (was) an exclusive domain parking service targeted mostly to owners of sizable geo domain portfolios.
