Our portfolio company, Indeed.com, has announced the commercial availability of a cost per click (CPC) advertising system targeting job seekers.
What that means is that advertisers now have a way to reach job seekers directly and pay for those ads on a per click basis (like they do at Google and Yahoo!).
But Indeed has done something pretty unique in rolling out its advertising service. If you are an employer looking to hire someone, your job listing is most likely already in the Indeed index because Indeed crawls the Internet everyday looking for job listings at the big job boards, the niche job boards, and company websites. But if you want to “sponsor” one or more of your listings, you can go to the Indeed advertiser system, specify a price you are willing to pay per click, and set a daily or monthly budget. Your jobs will then also appear as sponsored results above and below the natural search results when someone does a search that returns one of your job listings. In addition, sponsored jobs are displayed across Indeed’s network of partner websites.
The Indeed advertising system has been in beta since last year, has about 100 advertisers and is growing every day. The Company launched it officially last week.
Paul Forster, Indeed’s CEO, explains that this new advertising system is attractive to employers and other job advertisers for a number of reasons:
1. Indeed delivers job seekers that are highly targeted to an employer’s jobs. This is because Indeed is the most comprehensive search engine for jobs, with unrivalled relevancy algorithms and job search tools.
2. Indeed’s superior targeting leads to very high conversion rates – i.e. clicks to job applications and hires. Some of our current clients have experienced conversion rates with Indeed that are far higher than any other marketing channel they use.
3. Sponsoring jobs on Indeed is simple. Unlike search engine keyword advertising, you don’t have to pick keywords or write advertising copy.
4. Compared with buying job postings on a job board, Indeed’s advertising system is very cost effective and flexible. You only pay per click and you can alter your bid to drive more or less traffic to your jobs.
In addition to the ability to sponsor jobs, Indeed’s CPC ad system offers another unique opportunity. If you are selling something and believe that job seekers are an attractive target market, you can use Indeed’s CPC network to target ads against keywords, just like you can on Google or Yahoo!
Think about selling java programming classes or books for java developers to people searching for java programming jobs at Indeed. Given that Indeed processes over 20,000 searches with word Java in it each month, that’s an interesting advertising opportunity in and of itself.
Needless to say, all of us at Union Square Ventures are excited by the launch of Indeed’s advertising service. We believe it will allow Indeed to efficiently monetize the millions of job searches that are being done at Indeed.com each month.