MIVA Search Engine Marketing

MIVA (formerly FindWhat.com) was created by Craig Pisaris Henderson in 1999; Henderson is currently Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. MIVA’s main office is located at Fort Myers, Florida, but they have offices all over the world, and offer services in the following countries: U.S, U.K, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Metamend has been a MIVA partner since 2001 (for their shopping cart technology).

In relation to search engine marketing (SEM), MIVA labels itself a performance marketing network. To break it down, MIVA provides search engine solutions, ad content, and directory services for businesses that can be tailored to fit a business’s brand. MIVA is made up of three main divisions, which include: MIVA Media, Miva Small Business and MIVA Direct.

MIVA Media:

MIVA Media has three main programs, which are: Advertisers, Partners and Private Label.

Advertisers: Advertisers can pay for position with pay-per-click and pay-per-call. Advertisers choose keywords related to their businesses. They then select categories they wish to be placed under and their own defined bid amounts (the greater the bid, the higher the ranking and the better the placement position). Advertisers create their own ads by filling out the title and description. MIVA then distributes these ads along its network. Ads appear across the network amongst MIVA’s partners.

Partners: This service offers customizable solutions for web partners. Clients can provide branded features that offer the following:

Web Search: A customizable search engine that searches and returns both pay-per-click and algorithmic results. Revenues are shared with the partner when a user clicks on the MIVA pay-per-click ad.

Pay-Per-Call: When a user enters a search, a group of ads with phone numbers is displayed on the right hand side of the screen. By clicking on one of these ads, users are taken to a screen that provides further information, such as a map to the location of that advertiser, coupons, and a phone number etc. The benefit to this feature is that advertisers do not require websites.

Content: Keyword targeted advertiser listings can be placed into the partners’ site(s). This allows partners to place ads based on their content.

Directory: Clients can customize a directory provided by MIVA, or add more content to their own directories via MIVA. Directory listings relating to the site’s content can be added under various categories, and category tabs are displayed at the top of the screen.

Domains: Content and directories can be added to parked domains.

Exit Traffic: Users can be targeted with ads when they leave your site. If they click any of these ads revenues will be earned.

Tool Bar: A tool bar can be customized to the look and feel of the client’s web site. The tool bar also ties into news and RSS feeds.

Banner: Pay-per-click banners can be added to your site to create revenues.

Private Label: This feature allows large portals and directories access to the same features listed above, that they can market to advertisers and websites under their own brand, under MIVA’s turnkey operation.

MIVA Small Business

Built around MIVAMerchant, this product allows small businesses to build customizable storefronts.

MIVA Direct

MIVA Direct offers private label solutions for businesses, with customizable desktop software, a customizable search toolbar, customizable links, and RSS/XML feeds that link to content relevant to the site.