MerchantCircle Leverages Reply.com's Platform to Offer Free Competitive Price Quotes

SAN RAMON, Calif. and MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Reply.com, the leading marketplace for the acquisition of locally-targeted and category-specific traffic, today announced a partnership with MerchantCircle, the largest online network of local business owners in the nation. As a result of this partnership, MerchantCircle will leverage Reply.com's patented lead marketplace to offer new price quote features to consumers who visit the MerchantCircle network.  

The integration with Reply.com's Marketplace, which will cover multiple categories (including home services, automotive, real estate, and insurance), will improve the consumer experience across the MerchantCircle network and will create a new, and significant, incremental revenue stream.

"We're excited to be partnering with MerchantCircle," said Reply.com founder and CEO Payam Zamani. "Their business model dovetails nicely with our Marketplace, allowing consumers to request competitive quotes on local services. The simplicity with which our Marketplace offerings can be integrated with a high-quality service like MerchantCircle.com allows them to enhance their consumer offering while improving yield for their traffic."

Ben Smith, CEO of MerchantCircle.com, says of the relationship with Reply!:  "Our research shows that local consumers are looking for two things: deals from local business owners and competitive price quotes from local service providers.  While we have made great strides in delivering unique, valuable deals to consumers, our relationship with Reply! provides consumers with a simple and effective way to access competitive price quotes from hundreds of thousands of local service providers. The Reply! team has been terrific to work with and we look forward to a long, mutually-beneficial relationship."

About Reply!, Inc.

Reply.com operates the leading auction marketplace that enables advertisers to acquire locally-targeted and category-specific customer prospects on a cost-per-Enhanced Click™ or cost-per-lead basis. By eliminating the need for advertisers to develop and maintain complex, expensive online marketing infrastructures and teams of experts to source online consumer traffic from many different channels, Reply.com simplifies online locally-targeted marketing for businesses of all sizes. To learn more about Reply!, visit www.reply.com.

About MerchantCircle

Founded in 2005, MerchantCircle is the largest online network of local business owners in the nation, combining social networking features with free marketing tools that enable merchants to maximize their online visibility. Over 1.6 million merchants use MerchantCircle to create conversations with customers and connect with other local merchants.

In 2010, MerchantCircle acquired TimeBridge and the popular Bloglines service to further extend its network offerings.  MerchantCircle is based in Mountain View, Calif., and funded by Rustic Canyon Partners, Scale Venture Partners, Steamboat Ventures, and IAC. Learn more at http://www.MerchantCircle.com.

Additional information is available at blog.reply.com.

SOURCE Reply.com