Quigo Sees Local Boost From Time Warner Deal

For the past couple of years, Quigo‘s contextual network product, AdSonar, has been a steady alternative to Google and Yahoo! for local media companies (as have competitors such as ContextWeb and FAST AdMomentum). The company currently has more than 200 traditional media properties in its network of 500 sites, including entities owned by local powerhouses such as Tribune, Cox Newspapers and Fox TV. It also has some local-oriented verticals, such as Active.com and Sportingnews.com.

Now Quigo aims to ramp up the business with a major Time Warner deal that ought to attract many new advertisers. It is also set to launch PageCast, a video search product.

Some of the advertisers attracted to the TW properties are likely to trickle down to Quigo’s local partners. Due to the TW deal, Quigo will “come from relative obscurity” to be one of “six, seven, eight networks” that will make the cut, said Quigo CEO Michael Yavonditte in an interview last week with Webmaster World’s Brett Tabke.

During the interview, Yavonditte revealed that the company is a bigger player in local than one would have guessed, with “several millions of dollars” via its traditional media partnerships, which are heavily oriented towards local properties. That’s just 5 percent of Quigo’s overall revenues – albeit “an important 5 percent” because of the contextual advantages of the local media partners, said Yavonditte. Obviously, if “several” means more than “three,” that means that Quigo is pulling in more than $60 million.