A new entrant arrives today in the multibillion-dollar battle for local Internet search, advertising and commerce.
Ask.com, the search engine company with business ties to Colorado, is unveiling the new AskCity service nationwide to give users one place to buy movie tickets, reserve a restaurant table or find a local contractor, among other transactions.
“Local is one of the top five categories in search, but it is the category with the lowest user satisfaction,” Jim Lanzone, chief executive of Ask.com, said in a statement.
Ask.com is owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp., the New York based company run by Barry Diller that has a big shareholder in Liberty Media Corp., based in Douglas County.
IAC/InterActiveCorp. controls Citysearch, Ticketmaster and Golden-based ServiceMagic, among other properties. It also links to the online sites Fandango for movie tickets and OpenTable for restaurant reservations.
The prospects for local Internet search and commerce are driving deals. Last month, Yahoo announced a multi-year alliance with seven major newspaper companies, including Denver-based ap, the nation’s fourth-largest newspaper company and owner of The Denver Post.
The Yahoo alliance will focus on advertising, Internet search and news content in local markets, with an initial focus on the Yahoo HotJobs online service.
Overall, the local online advertising market could grow from $3.4 billion this year to $12.4 billion by 2010, according to a Bank of America analysis.
“If you’re driving people trying to make decisions about local activity, looking up business, looking up directions and research, it’s not even close to being monetized fully,” said Charlene Li, an analyst at Forrester Research, a technology research firm based in Cambridge, Mass.
One of the beneficiaries has been ServiceMagic, the Colorado company that’s been in business for eight years and employs 650 people. It was acquired by IAC/InterActiveCorp. in 2004.
ServiceMagic’s 2006 revenues are projected to be $60 million and its 45,000 listed service contractors doing an estimated $1.2 billion in business from the website’s referrals, according to the company.
“As consumer use of the Internet matures, we’re starting to demand that it has relevance to our daily lives,” said Rodney Rice, company co-founder and co-chief executive. “We conduct more business within five miles of our house than in far-flung places, and a large percentage of our economy is local.”
There’s plenty of business to go around, according to Perry Evans, chief executive at Local Matters, a Denver-based software and media services firm that helps Yellow Pages publishers expand their offerings in local markets.
“We watch (Ask.com) very carefully, but they come at it from a different perspective,” Evans said. “There’s a lot of market opportunity with growth for everybody.”
