Our Internet Advertising & Fees business operates a network of websites
that connect companies to highly targeted audiences at critical stages in their
lives. Our goal is to offer compelling online services for the users of such
websites through personalization, community features and enhanced content. We
monetize this web traffic through display advertising and lead generation. We
believe that these properties appeal to advertisers and other third parties
as they deliver certain discrete demographics entirely online. Beginning in
the third quarter of 2011, the Company no longer engages in arbitrage lead generation
activities due to the diminishing profit opportunity and the promulgation of
new regulations applicable to the Company’s customers in the for-profit
education business.
Revenue for the Internet Advertising & Fees segment is derived primarily
from two types of services: display advertising and lead generation. Display
advertising opportunities have been integrated across the Monster Worldwide
network of websites, allowing marketers to deliver targeted online advertising
messages via numerous sizes and formats of creative units. Consumers come to
Monster’s websites for information and advice on how to manage critical
life transitions, and this environment is typically seen by marketers as desirable
for the promotion of products and services as consumers are actively looking
for new ideas and solutions. Lead generation is a direct response business in
which marketers pay for connections to consumers whose demographics match the
requirements of specific business offerings and who request information about
the offerings. Our large database of users and ongoing collection of numerous
points of data allows us to provide our customers with targeted and valuable
opportunities to connect with interested consumers.
Sales and Marketing
The Company’s sales resources consist of field sales, telesales, and a
self-service e-Commerce channel. Our sales activities are geared towards enterprise,
SMB, government agencies, advertising agencies and educational institutions.
The field and telesales resources for our Careers business in the United States
are regionalized to better serve our customers with a more high touch, consultative
approach, while providing greater efficiencies for developing new business opportunities.
We have specialty units within the sales organization, dedicated to serving
our vertical markets, such as: government; healthcare; staffing; and newspapers.
Our telesales staff is primarily responsible for telemarketing and customer
service for SMBs and is located in our offices around the world. Our field sales
staff focuses on both local and national customers and is also dispersed throughout
our offices globally. Our e-Commerce channel is available to all customer groups
and is currently most heavily used by smaller employers. Our Internet Advertising
& Fees sales force is located throughout the United States and is focused
on cross-selling the products of each property within its network.
The majority of our advertising budget is allocated to online advertising including:
search engine marketing; alliances; and distributed job content to drive unique
visitors to search for and apply to jobs. Our marketing approach also includes
a regionally varied selection of traditional offline advertising such as: television;
radio; and business, consumer and trade publications to market and promote the
Monster brand and our innovative products and services. The majority of our
marketing and promotion expense is allocated to our Careers-North America and
Careers-International segments.
Our customers are comprised of individuals, small and medium-sized organizations,
enterprise organizations, federal, state and local government agencies and educational
institutions. No one customer accounts for more than 5% of our total annual
revenue.
