AT&T Dials Up Ingenio Buy

When we reported on Ingenio riding the CPA wave, we didn’t know the wave would drop the company on AT&T’s shore.

The privately held Ingenio, which has Benchmark Capital as its biggest backer, joined up with AT&T. Bringing the pay per call technology Ingenio possesses will give AT&T the ability to promote leads across mobile, Internet, or print media as the advertiser desires.

AT&T already does local search advertising through the Yellowpages.com Network, AT&T Real Yellow Pages and 1-800-Yellow Pages. They cited a growing trend towards performance-based advertising as the motivation for making the Ingenio deal.

“As advertisers add performance-based advertising to their marketing mix, this investment makes sense for our business,” said Ray Wilkins, AT&T group president for Diversified Business. Yellowpages.com will be Ingenio’s destination within AT&T, which expects to keep the existing management in place.

Kevin Harvey, general partner at Benchmark and a member of the Ingenio board, could not comment on specifics of the deal. We asked what made now the right time for this deal, to which he averred the timing must have made sense to AT&T at the time.

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