About six months after taking the helm at CityGrid Media, the new chief executive has unveiled his vision for the local advertising company.

Earlier this month Jason Finger announced that the West Hollywood company has laid off 15 percent of the staff and is changing its advertising model.

CityGrid, which operates a local business advertising network and runs consumer review websites Citysearch, Urbanspoon and Insider Pages, is looking to develop an advertising model that’s more likely to generate business for local businesses.

As part of the transition, CityGrid, which is owned by Barry Diller’s New York Internet conglomerate IAC/InterActive Corp., has laid off about 67 of its 450 employees.

The layoffs come from the company’s technology and support divisions. Those employees had been helping CityGrid transition from an old technology platform to a new one. Now that the transition is complete, CityGrid has shrunk those divisions to reallocate the resources toward growing its ad network and consumer websites.

Finger told Silicon Valley blog TechCrunch earlier this month that the staff reduction allows the company to “make appropriate investments going forward” to “accelerate the innovation cycle” for its products geared toward its small business customers.

The layoffs did not affect staff at CityGrid’s website properties. In fact, Urbanspoon, which is headquartered in Seattle, has job openings listed on its website.

CityGrid has traditionally offered its small business clients a cost-per-click ad model where the advertiser, such as a local hairdresser or dentist office, pays a nominal fee every time someone clicks an online ad. While it will still provide some CPC advertising options, it is now focusing on offering a cost-per-acquisition model where advertisers pay a higher fee for an action such as a phone call from a potential customer or a booked dinner reservation from a new diner.

Although the CPA model is more expensive for advertisers than the CPC model, it theoretically does a better job of bringing new customers to that client, said Brandi Willard, the company’s director of communication.

“Local advertisers are looking for more customers and a CPA model is more transaction oriented,” she said.

But Peter Stabler, an IAC analyst for Wells Fargo Securities in San Francisco, said moving from one ad model to another might not result in more revenue for CityGrid. The company might be able to charge advertisers more for a call from an interested customer, but those calls are less frequent than clicks on an online ad.

“At the end of the day, it’s a bit of a transfer of risk,” he said. “It incentivizes CityGrid to send as high-quality traffic to customers as possible.”

Advertising acquisition

To beef up CityGrid’s CPA resources, the company in August acquired a cost-per-call service for small- and medium-sized businesses called Felix. The company, which was developed by New York software firm Yext, employs the CPA model by charging advertisers only for calls that occur with potential new customers who are likely to buy the product.

The Felix acquisition allows CityGrid to give the cost-per-call advertising option to many of its existing customers and introduces CityGrid to Felix customers in local business categories such as veterinary care and TV repair.

CityGrid’s recent acquisition and ad model change are Finger’s first big moves at the company since he became chief executive in April. He replaced Jay Herratti, a longtime IAC executive, who helped form the company in 2010, when IAC pulled several of its local ad companies under one roof.

IAC tapped Finger because of his experience founding Seamless, a New York website for ordering take-out food and deliveries.

“I believe Jason, with his proven track record of entrepreneurial success in the local space, is the perfect person to drive continued growth and innovation,” IAC Chief Executive Greg Blatt said in a statement at the time.

In his first quarter with the company, Finger has helped boost revenue. For the third quarter, IAC reported that its local division, which includes CityGrid, had revenue of $84.3 million, up 5 percent from $80.1 million in the same period last year. IAC attributed the increase to CityGrid’s acquisition of Felix and higher sales from its reseller partners, while direct sales were down for the quarter.