Business.com is a digital media company and B2B web destination which offers various
performance marketing advertising, including
lead generation
In marketing, lead generation () is the initiation of consumer interest or enquiry into products or services of a business. A lead is the contact information and, in some cases, demographic information of a customer who is interested in a spe ...
products on a
pay per lead
Cost per action (CPA), also sometimes misconstrued in marketing environments as cost per acquisition, is an online advertising measurement and pricing model referring to a specified action, for example, a sale, click, or form submit (e.g., conta ...
and
pay per click
Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher (typically a search engine, website owner, or a network of websites) when the ad is clicked.
Pay-per-click is usually ...
basis,
directory listings, and display advertising. The site covers business industry news and trends for growth companies and the B2B community to stay up-to-date, and hosted more than 15,000 pieces of content as of November 2014. Business.com operates as a subsidiary of the Purch Group since being acquired in 2016.
Having sold their brands to
Future, Purch's existing B2B assets later reorganised into Business.com.
History
Business.com, Inc. was founded in 1999 by
Jake Winebaum
Jake Winebaum (born 1959) is an American entrepreneur. Winebaum is the founder of FamilyFun magazine, Business.com, Brighter.com and co-founder of eCompanies and Applied Cognition.
Early life
Winebaum’s father, Sumner, was an advertising ...
, previously
chairman of the
Walt Disney Internet Group
Disney Interactive is an American video game and internet company that oversaw various websites and interactive media owned by The Walt Disney Company.
History
1995–1996: Formation and beginnings
In December 1994, Disney announced that it wa ...
; and
Sky Dayton
Sky Dylan Dayton (born August 8, 1971) is an American entrepreneur and investor. He is the founder of Internet service provider EarthLink, co-founder of eCompanies, and the founder of Boingo.
Early life
Dayton's father was the sculptor Wend ...
, founder of
Earthlink
EarthLink is an American Internet service provider.
It went public on NASDAQ in January 1997. Much of the company's growth was via acquisition; by 2000, ''The New York Times'' described Earthlink as the "second largest Internet service provider ...
,
Boingo Wireless
Boingo Wireless is an American company that designs, builds and manages wireless networks. Its public and private networks include distributed antenna systems (DAS), small cells, macro towers and more than one million Wi-Fi hotspots around the ...
, and
Helio, among others. Around that time, the Business.com domain name was purchased from
Marc Ostrofsky by Winebaum's eCompanies Ventures for $7.5 million. In addition to investment by eCompanies, early funding in the amount of $61 million was provided in 2000 by
Pearson PLC,
Reed Business Information
RELX plc (pronounced "Rel-ex") is a British multinational information and analytics company headquartered in London, England. Its businesses provide scientific, technical and medical information and analytics; legal information and analytics; ...
,
McGraw Hill
McGraw Hill is an American educational publishing company and one of the "big three" educational publishers that publishes educational content, software, and services for pre-K through postgraduate education. The company also publishes referen ...
, and others. In its initial form, Business.com aimed to be the Internet's leading search engine for small business and corporate information.
Business.com struggled through the
Dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet.
Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compo ...
years. The company retooled beginning in 2002 after massive layoffs and a new focus on developing a
pay for performance ad network model. In April 2003, the company achieved profitability, and on November 8, 2004, the company secured an additional $10 million in venture capital funding from
Benchmark Capital
Benchmark is a venture capital firm based in San Francisco that provides seed money to startups.
History
The firm's most successful investment was a 1997 investment of $6.7 million in eBay for 22.1% of the company. In 2011, it invested $12 mil ...
.
On October 9, 2006, Business.com launched Work.com, a site with business how-to guides contributed by the small business community. Work.com was sold in March 2012 and is now owned by
Salesforce.com
Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, a ...
.
Then on July 26, 2007, after beating out
Dow Jones & Company, the
New York Times Company
The New York Times Company is an American mass media company that publishes ''The New York Times''. Its headquarters are in Manhattan, New York City.
History
The company was founded by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones in New York City. T ...
,
IAC/InterActiveCorp
IAC Inc. is an American holding company that owns brands across 100 countries, mostly in media and Internet. The company is incorporated under Delaware General Corporation Law and headquartered in New York City. Joey Levin, who previously led t ...
, and
News Corp, print and interactive marketing company
R.H. Donnelley Corporation announced plans to acquire Business.com in a deal valued at $345 million. The deal closed on August 23, 2007.
In June 2009, R.H. Donnelley filed for bankruptcy. The company emerged from Chapter 11 as Dex One Corporation on February 1, 2010.
In February 2011,
Resource Nation acquired the brand and associated assets of Business.com to become one of the largest online destinations for business buyers looking for business-to-business (B2B) solutions. JMI Equity, a growth equity firm that specializes in investments in internet companies, provided funding in support of the transaction and the Company's ongoing growth. Terms of the transactions were not disclosed.
In January 2013, the appointment of Tony Uphoff as CEO was announced. Uphoff was most recently CEO of UBM TechWeb and named a Top 100 business media exec by B2B Magazine and a "Top Media Innovator " by Mins B2B in 2009. In March 2013, Business.com launched a site refresh, new logo and new suite of products.
In August, 2014, the Business.com website was relaunched expanding beyond a home page and refresh that happened in March 2013. The backend technology was all updated including a new content management platform, in-house analytics, and big data platform to capture every behavior of the audience to deliver contextually relevant content based on the intent and navigation path. According to the CEO, a major emphasis was also put on responsive web design, removal of pages that were not valuable to the audience, and allowing a new content platform to drive the site experience.
In June 2016, Business.com was acquired by
Purch Group
Purch Group, Inc. was a New York City-based digital media company. Originally established in 2003 as TechMedia Network, Inc., it was positioned as a "portfolio of brands and products focused on purchasing decisions"—consisting primarily of we ...
. Business.com was not included in the
Future plc
Future plc is an international multimedia company established in the United Kingdom in 1985. The company has over 220 brands that span magazines, newsletters, websites, and events in fields such as video games, technology, films, music, photogr ...
acquisition of Purch's consumer properties.
Content
Business.com produces daily content, in which the staff reporters and market experts are featured. In 2014, the company's Daily Business Quote of the Day was featured by Time Inc. as one of the 27
Pinterest
Pinterest is an American image sharing and social media service designed to enable saving and discovery of information (specifically "ideas") on the internet using images, and on a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos, in the form of pinboard ...
Boards that will make your life better. The market experts and staff provide insight for the latest news and discussions around marketing, human resources, technology, entrepreneurship, sales and finance. Market experts are outside contributors providing expertise and insights on trends happening in their perspective businesses. Market experts include Mike Volpe of
Hubspot
HubSpot is an American developer and marketer of software products for inbound marketing, sales, and customer service. HubSpot was founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah in 2006.
Its products and services aim to provide tools for customer ...
, Sarah benard of
iCrossing and Aaron Kahlow of Online Marketing Institute (OMI).
The site also features content to help make a purchasing decision including comparison charts, white papers and case studies that are non-biased for the business buyer.
Products
Business.com serves advertisers looking to reach the growth companies audience characterized as 20-1000 employee size. Advertising customers include some of the largest B2B brands in B2B such as
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
,
Salesforce
Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, a ...
,
Marketo
Marketo, Inc. is an American software company, headquartered in San Mateo, California. Marketo develops and sells marketing automation software for account-based marketing and other marketing services and products including SEO and content crea ...
,
ADP,
Sprint as well as smaller brands. Its suite of
digital marketing
Digital marketing is the component of marketing that uses the Internet and online based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services. Its development d ...
products include
display advertising
Digital display advertising is online graphic advertising through banners, text, images, video, and audio. The main purpose of digital display advertising is to post company ads on third-party websites. A display ad is usually interactive (i.e. ...
,
pay per click
Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher (typically a search engine, website owner, or a network of websites) when the ad is clicked.
Pay-per-click is usually ...
,
email marketing
Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to ...
,
content marketing
Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online. It is often used by businesses in order to achieve the following goals: attract attention and generate leads, exp ...
demand generation, and
lead generation
In marketing, lead generation () is the initiation of consumer interest or enquiry into products or services of a business. A lead is the contact information and, in some cases, demographic information of a customer who is interested in a spe ...
for sales ready leads.
In December, 2014, the company launched LENS, a lead expansion and nurturing service, as part of their demand generation product set.
Awards and recognition
Business.com has been named as a Best Place to Work by the ''
San Diego Business Journal
The ''San Diego Business Journal'' is a weekly newspaper in San Diego, California covering local business news. Each week, the San Diego Business Journal examines the economic news, demographics and lifestyle profiles of San Diego, and the many ...
'' in 2012, 2013, 2014. In October 2014, the website was ranked #1 on
Inc.com's '50 Websites Your Startup Needs to Succeed'.
[{{cite web, url=http://www.inc.com/drew-hendricks/50-websites-your-startup-needs-to-succeed.html, title=50 Websites Your Startup Needs to Succeed, publisher=Inc.com, date=October 2, 2014]
References
{{reflist
External links
*{{Official website, www.business.com
business.com BlogBusiness.com, Inc. company profilefrom BusinessWeek
CNN's Money.com article based on an interview with Jake Winebaum.
via socaltech.com
venture capital site
JMI Equityweb site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Business.Com
Privately held companies based in California
Internet search engines
Web directories
Companies based in Carlsbad, California