Business.com

Last updated
Business.com Media, Inc.
Company type Corporation
Industry Performance Based Marketing
Founded1999;25 years ago (1999)
Headquarters Carlsbad, California, U.S.
Parent Business.com
Website www.business.com

Business.com is a digital media company and B2B web destination which offers various performance marketing advertising, including lead generation products on a pay per lead and pay per click basis, directory listings, [1] 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. [2]

Contents

Having sold their brands to Future, Purch's existing B2B assets later reorganised into Business.com. [3]

History

Business.com, Inc. was founded in 1999 by Jake Winebaum, previously chairman of the Walt Disney Internet Group; and Sky Dayton, founder of Earthlink, Boingo Wireless, and Helio, among others. [4] Around that time, the Business.com domain name was purchased from Marc Ostrofsky by Winebaum's eCompanies Ventures for $7.5 million. [5] [6] In addition to investment by eCompanies, early funding in the amount of $61 million was provided in 2000 by Pearson PLC, Reed Business Information, McGraw Hill, and others. [7] In its initial form, Business.com aimed to be the Internet's leading search engine for small business and corporate information. [8]

Business.com struggled through the Dot-com bubble years. [9] The company retooled beginning in 2002 after massive layoffs and a new focus on developing a pay for performance ad network model. [10] 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.

Having purchased the domain in 2001, [11] [12] Business.com launched Work.com on October 9, 2006. The site included business how-to guides contributed by the small business community. [13] Work.com was sold in March 2012 and is now a corporate performance management platform owned by Salesforce. [14] [15] [16]

Then on July 26, 2007, after beating out Dow Jones & Company, the New York Times Company, IAC/InterActiveCorp, 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. [17] [18]

In June 2009, R.H. Donnelley filed for bankruptcy. [19] The company emerged from Chapter 11 as Dex One Corporation on February 1, 2010. [20] In February 2011, Resource Nation acquired the brand and associated assets of Business.com. JMI Equity provided funding in support of the transaction. [21]

In January 2013, the appointment of Tony Uphoff as CEO was announced. [22] In March 2013, Business.com launched a site refresh, new logo and new suite of products. [23] New content management, analytics, and big data platforms were introduced in August 2014. [24]

In June 2016, Business.com was acquired by Purch Group. [25] When Future plc acquired Purch's consumer properties in 2018, Business.com was not included and was instead spun off as an independent company. [26]

Content

Business.com produces daily content to help business owners plan, launch, manage, and grow their businesses. [27] Staff reporters and market experts provide insight on the latest news and discussions around marketing, human resources, technology, entrepreneurship, sales, and finance. [28]

Business.com also features objective reviews, roundups, and buying guides for business products to help business owners make purchasing decisions. [29] The site also includes tools for calculating payroll deductions, [30] stock options, [31] and cash flow. [32]

Products

Business.com serves advertisers looking to reach small and mid-sized business. [33] Advertising customers include some of the largest B2B brands in B2B such as Intel, Salesforce, Marketo, ADP, Sprint as well as smaller brands. Its suite of digital marketing products include display advertising, pay per click, email marketing, content marketing demand generation, and lead generation for sales ready leads.[ citation needed ]

In December, 2014, the company launched LENS, a lead expansion and nurturing service, as part of their demand generation product set. [34]

Awards and recognition

Business.com has been named as a Best Place to Work by the San Diego Business Journal in 2012, 2013, 2014. [35] In October 2014, the website was ranked #1 on Inc.com's '50 Websites Your Startup Needs to Succeed'. [36]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UBM plc</span> UK-based media company

UBM plc was a British business-to-business (B2B) events organiser headquartered in London, England, before its acquisition by Informa in 2018. It had a long history as a multinational media company. Its main focus was on B2B events, but its principal operations included live media and business-to-business communications, marketing services and data provision, and it principally served the technology, healthcare, trade and transport, ingredients and fashion industries. UBM was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Data Group</span> Publishing company

International Data Group is a market intelligence and demand generation company focused on the technology industry. IDG, Inc.'s mission is centered around supporting the technology industry through research, data, marketing technology, and insights that help create and sustain relationships between businesses.

<i>AnandTech</i> Online computer hardware magazine owned by Future plc

AnandTech is an online computer hardware magazine owned by Future plc. It was founded in 1997 by then-14-year-old Anand Lal Shimpi, who served as CEO and editor-in-chief until August 30, 2014, with Ryan Smith replacing him as editor-in-chief. The web site is a source of hardware reviews for off-the-shelf components and exhaustive benchmarking, targeted towards computer building enthusiasts, but later expanded to cover mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation is an American company that provides commercial data, analytics, and insights for businesses. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, the company offers a wide range of products and services for risk and financial analysis, operations and supply, and sales and marketing professionals, as well as research and insights on global business issues. It serves customers in government and industries such as communications, technology, strategic financial services, and retail, telecommunications, and manufacturing markets. Often referred to as D&B, the company's database contains over 500 million business records worldwide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salesforce</span> American software company

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, e-commerce, analytics, and application development.

Tom's Hardware is an online publication owned by Future plc and focused on technology. It was founded in 1996 by Thomas Pabst. It provides articles, news, price comparisons, videos and reviews on computer hardware and high technology. The site features coverage on CPUs, motherboards, RAM, PC cases, graphic cards, display technology, power supplies and displays, storage, smartphones, tablets, gaming, consoles, and computer peripherals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Space.com</span> Space and astronomy news website

Space.com is an online publication focused on space exploration, astronomy, skywatching and entertainment, with editorial teams based in the United States and United Kingdom. The website offers live coverage of space missions, astronomical discoveries and reviews about skywatching telescopes, binoculars and sci-fi entertainment gear. It is owned by Future plc headquartered in Bath City, England. Its stories are often syndicated to other media outlets, including CNN, MSNBC, Yahoo!, and USA Today.

UBM Technology Group, formerly CMP Publications, was a business-to-business multimedia company that provided information and integrated marketing services to technology professionals worldwide. It offered marketers and advertisers services such as print, newsletters, custom web sites, and events. Its products and services include newspapers, magazines, Internet products, research, education and training, trade shows and conferences, direct marketing services and custom publishing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aberdeen Strategy and Research</span>

Aberdeen is an international marketing intelligence company. Aberdeen's headquarters is based in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States, with an additional US office location in Wilton, CT, as well as three European offices in Versailles (France), Madrid (Spain), and Chertsey.

Team Internet Group PLC is a British multinational internet services holding company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. Its subsidiaries provide services categorized in two segments: Online Marketing and Online Presence. The Online Marketing segment offers services and products in digital advertising, domain monetization, traffic commerce and product comparison; the Online Presence segment provide domain name registry and registrar services, in addition to associated products and services, including web hosting, brand management, and domain parking.

Omniture is an online marketing and web analytics business unit in Orem, Utah. It was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2009. Until 2011, Omniture operated as a business unit within Adobe as the "Omniture Business Unit", but as of 2012 Adobe began retiring the Omniture name as former Omniture products were integrated into the Adobe Marketing Cloud.

Dimdim was a software company that provided a web-based platform for realtime collaboration and meetings. Dimdim provided web conferencing service where users could share desktops, show slides, collaborate, chat, talk, and broadcast via webcam. It was compared to the WebEx 2.0 web conferencing application. Dimdim was acquired by Salesforce.com for $31 million on January 6, 2011.

HubSpot, Inc. 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salesforce Marketing Cloud</span> Digital marketing automation provider

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a provider of digital marketing automation and analytics software and services. It was founded in 2000 under the name ExactTarget. The company filed for an IPO in 2007, but withdrew its filing two years later and raised $145 million in funding. It acquired CoTweet, Pardot, iGoDigital and Keymail Marketing. In 2012, it raised $161.5 million in an initial public offering, before being acquired by Salesforce for $2.5 billion in 2013. ExactTarget was renamed Salesforce Marketing Cloud in 2014 after its acquisition by Salesforce.

Traction is an interactive advertising agency based in San Francisco. In 2014, they were named Independent Agency of the Year in the iMedia Agency Awards. Their clients include Alibaba.com, Adobe Systems, Bank of America, Cabot Creamery, California Bank & Trust, Camelbak, Intuit, Intel, Kelly-Moore Paints, Livescribe, Meebo, Robert Half International, Salesforce.com, SAP, and Shutterfly, Walmart, ZoneAlarm.

Jake Winebaum is an American entrepreneur. Winebaum is the founder of FamilyFun magazine, Business.com, Brighter.com and co-founder of eCompanies and Applied Cognition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Act-On</span> American software company

Act-On Software is a software-as-a-service product for marketing automation. The company is headquartered in Portland, Oregon and was founded in 2008, originally retailing its software exclusively through Cisco, which provided $2 million in funding.

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 websites focusing on reviews of consumer electronics, positioned to marketers as outlets to "directly engage with buyers in the right place, at the right time".

Engagio was an American software company based in San Mateo, California marketing a B2B Account Based Marketing platform for account-based initiatives. It was acquired by Demandbase in 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oracle Advertising and Customer Experience (CX)</span> Cloud-based marketing service

Oracle Advertising and Customer Experience (CX) is a suite of cloud-based applications offered by Oracle Corporation that includes tools for advertising, marketing, sales, e-commerce, customer service.

References

  1. ↑ "10 Common Link Building Problems". Search Engine Watch. 2013-10-02.
  2. ↑ Teresa Novellino. "Purch Picks up Business.com, Tapping into Business of Small Business". New York Business Journal.
  3. ↑ "Purch Finalizes Sale of Consumer Business to Future PLC". www.prnewswire.com. September 6, 2018. Retrieved 2024-03-23.
  4. ↑ Rose, Frank (March 2006). "Sky Dayton Gets Mobile". Wired. Retrieved 2008-07-10.
  5. ↑ "One Word Domain Name Sales Reach Record Levels". PR.com. 2008-06-11. Retrieved 2008-07-10.
  6. ↑ Wingfield, Nick (1997-06-04). "Domain name fetches record price". CNET. Archived from the original on September 25, 2012. Retrieved 2008-07-10.
  7. ↑ "Business.com Secures New Round of Financing; Growth Potential of Business Search Drives $10 Million Investment from Benchmark Capital". Business Wire. 2004-11-08. Archived from the original on May 29, 2005. Retrieved 2008-07-10.
  8. ↑ Loftus, Peter (2004-12-08). "Something ventured: Renewed VC Interest In A Pricey Name". business.com (Dow Jones Newswires). Archived from the original on August 6, 2007. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  9. ↑ "Dot-Com Layoffs and Shutdowns". The Wall Street Journal Online. 2001-11-28. Archived from the original on 2008-05-09. Retrieved 2008-07-11.
  10. ↑ Siklos, Richard (2008-05-02). "Business.com's winding road". CNNMoney.com. Retrieved 2008-07-10.
  11. ↑ "Business.com Launches Version 2.0 with Enhanced Content and Features". newsbreaks.infotoday.com. 2001-04-16. Retrieved 2024-03-23.
  12. ↑ Pham, Alex (2001-03-31). "Work.com Is Sold for Mere $500,000 to Business.com". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2024-03-23.
  13. ↑ "Work.com launches to help small businesses tackle their most important business tasks". Business.com. 2006-10-09. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  14. ↑ Allemann, Andrew (2012-03-15). "Did Salesforce.com acquire Work.com domain name?". Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News. Retrieved 2024-03-23.
  15. ↑ Allemann, Andrew (2012-07-30). "Salesforce.com buys Work.com domain name". Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News. Retrieved 2024-03-23.
  16. ↑ Rao, Leena (2012-09-19). "Salesforce Debuts Rypple-Powered Work.com To Help Companies Manage Talent, Partners With Facebook". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2024-03-23.
  17. ↑ "Business.com, Inc". BusinessWeek. Archived from the original on January 14, 2009. Retrieved 2008-07-10.
  18. ↑ "Business.com Sells for $350 Million". TechCrunch. 2007-07-26. Retrieved 2024-03-23.
  19. ↑ "Business.com Owner Files for Bankruptcy". Domain Name Wire. June 2, 2009. Retrieved 2009-06-18.
  20. ↑ Hosford, Christopher (February 2, 2010). "R.H. DONNELLEY EMERGES FROM BANKRUPTCY AS DEX ONE". Ad Age. Retrieved March 22, 2024.
  21. ↑ "Resource Nation Acquires Business.com". www.prnewswire.com. February 16, 2011. Retrieved 2024-03-23.
  22. ↑ Mickey, Bill (2013-01-15). "Tony Uphoff Named CEO". FOLIO Mag. Archived from the original on January 18, 2013.
  23. ↑ "Business.com blog". Business.com. March 2013. Archived from the original on 2013-03-16. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  24. ↑ "Business.com Press Release on Site Transformation and B2B Digital Media". Business.com. 2014-08-11. Archived from the original on 2015-02-22. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  25. ↑ Ha, Anthony (June 22, 2016). "Purch acquires small-business site Business.com". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-08-07.
  26. ↑ Guaglione, Sara (September 7, 2018). "Future PLC Acquires Purch's B2C Brands, B2B Division Renamed Business.com". Mediapost.com. Retrieved 2019-10-16.
  27. ↑ "About Us". business.com. Retrieved 2024-03-23.
  28. ↑ "The Best Resources For Business Owners". business.com. Retrieved 2024-03-23.
  29. ↑ "Business.com Reviews the Products and Services That Help SMBs Grow". business.com. Retrieved 2024-03-23.
  30. ↑ "Payroll Deductions Calculator". business.com. Retrieved 2024-03-23.
  31. ↑ "How to Calculate the Value of Your Stock Options". business.com. Retrieved 2024-03-23.
  32. ↑ "Cash Flow Calculator". business.com. Retrieved 2024-03-23.
  33. ↑ "Reach in-market buyers at all stages". business.com. Retrieved 2024-03-23.
  34. ↑ "Business.com Launches Lead Expansion and Nurturing Service". Business.com. December 1, 2014. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  35. ↑ "San Diego Business Journal 2014 Best Places to Work" (PDF). SDBJ.com. August 2014.
  36. ↑ Hendricks, Drew (October 2, 2014). "50 Websites Your Startup Needs to Succeed". Inc.com.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.