Mr. Elias and Mr. Feldstein sold the commercial enterprise to management in 2005 and started again under the name Red Ventures, becoming pioneers in that era ’ mho efforts to link digital data and real world commerce. They entered the business of selling subscriptions for DirecTV and burglar alarms for ADT Security. Along the way, they figured out how to integrate on-line market and antique telemarketing — and they got very good at search engine optimization.
early tricks were more clever. For exemplify, they purchased more than a million toll-free telephone numbers, and each visitor to their commercialize web site was shown a different one. so when prospective customers called, red Ventures knew precisely what they had been looking at on the web site, which gave the agents what they needed to make individualized sales pitches. This was a pretty high-tech shape of digital surveillance in those more barren times. As the company grew and the marketplace shifted, its founders realized that the technological know-how they had developed had itself become a commodity and that they needed to develop their own brands, not merely sell others ’. In 2015, Red Ventures raised $ 250 million, which went toward its $ 1.4 billion purchase of Bankrate, a personal finance company that helps people comparison shop for fiscal products ( and earns a commission on each sale ). That skill included The Points Guy, a web site devoted to elucidating airline mileage programs and credit calling card deals. The Points Guy had built a profitable commercial enterprise earning commissions whenever people signed up for credit cards they had read about on the locate — often in rant reviews of high-end cards .