Web publisher Oversee.net in downtown Los Angeles has sold another noncore asset, striking a deal for its business known as DomainSponsor with Swiss tech firm Rook Media.
DomainSponsor is a service that populates otherwise empty websites with advertising that will be seen by consumers who might have been looking for a product or service with a similar name to the advertiser’s sites.
Oversee has been focusing on expanding its online portfolio of comparison-shopping sites in the travel, retail and credit markets. The company said the sites have an audience of more than 25 million every month. Brands include WanderWe.com, CreditCards.org and Compare.com. Oversee added to that portfolio in January with the purchase of Pasadena’s Crashworks Inc., a maker of a free city-guide app for iPhones, to serve as the foundation of travel site WanderWe’s forthcoming iOS app.
In 2012, the publisher sold Moniker and SnapNames, two other domain-related assets, to KeyDrive, a Luxembourg Internet company. Moniker pioneered the live domain-name auction business, while SnapNames operates what is considered the largest auction of already registered domain names. Web.com, a Jacksonville, Fla., firm, bought SnapNames from KeyDrive in March for an undisclosed sum.
The refocusing of the business began when co-Presidents Debra Domeyer and Scott Morrow joined the company in 2011. Shortly after their arrival, Oversee laid off 23 employees, 13 percent of its workforce.
At the time, Morrow told the Business Journal that the company would be hiring in its engineering, sales and marketing divisions to build back up its staff.
“This was not just cost-cutting to create lower expenses,” he said. “This was to reposition and realign the company toward a new vision.”
Domeyer and Morrow were named co-chief executives in January 2012, and Morrow left later that year to take the helm of L.A.’s Luxury Link Travel Group. Domeyer now serves solo as Oversee’s chief executive.
Domeyer said last week that her goal for the company is to expand its portfolio of Web and mobile brands into different industries.
Benjamin Kuo, editor of SoCalTech.com, said Oversee’s decision to sell off DomainSponsor made sense given the shifting habits of Internet users, who increasingly use smartphones to surf the Web and make online purchases.
“Companies like Oversee.net are increasingly looking at how they can shift their model to be less dependent on Internet searches and directly typed domain names,” Kuo said.
Terms of the DomainSponsor deal were not disclosed.
