Seattle’s Marchex Acquires Boston-Area Startup Jingle Networks for $62.5M, Adding Heft to Phone Call Advertising

Seattle-based Marchex, an online advertising and search company, is acquiring Billerica, MA-based Jingle Networks for up to $62.5 million in cash and stock, the companies announced today.

Marchex (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MCHX]]) says the combination will allow its advertising network to reach more than 500 million phone calls annually. Jingle Networks provides advertising to mobile carriers and network operators, with ads featured both in phone calls and through mobile apps. Marchex also singled out Jingle’s voice search operation as a key part of the acquisition.

“While the ‘click’ was the monetization event in the desktop world, we believe that in today’s mobile world the monetization event best suited to connecting advertisers to customers is the call,” Marchex chief operating officer Pete Christothoulou said in a statement.

Marchex also said it expects Jingle Networks to generate more than $22 million in net revenue this year. No layoffs are expected as part of the acquisition, the company said. “The 30 Jingle employees will be basically just joining Marchex,” spokesman Jim Cullinan says.

Jingle’s investors include Liberty Associated Partners, Flybridge Capital Partners, Goldman Sachs, First Round Capital, and Comcast Interactive Capital. The company was founded in the Boston area in 2005, moved to Silicon Valley for a few years, and then moved back to Boston in 2008.

Author: Curt Woodward

Curt covered technology and innovation in the Boston area for Xconomy. He previously worked in Xconomy’s Seattle bureau and continued some coverage of Seattle-area tech companies, including Amazon and Microsoft. Curt joined Xconomy in February 2011 after nearly nine years with The Associated Press, the world's largest news organization. He worked in three states and covered a wide variety of beats for the AP, including business, law, politics, government, and general mayhem. A native Washingtonian, Curt earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. As a past president of the state's Capitol Correspondents Association, he led efforts to expand statehouse press credentialing to online news outlets for the first time.