Yellowtom joins Webcertain group
WEB search and marketing firm WebCertain is set to invest £500,000 in developing small business marketing platform Yellowtom after taking a majority stake in the business.
WebCertain has previously been involved with the development of Yellowtom, a franchise operation based on a local search engine that uses vouchers to promote small businesses.
Yellowtom will become WebCertain local with founder Nigel Rush retaining a stake and taking the role of chairman.
Mr Rush said: “We recognised there was a significant opportunity for Yellowtom in the rapidly emerging local advertising market because of our ability to provide a highly personal service to local businesses wishing to capitalise on the development of search engines, social networks and email but not having the time or money to do everything.
“Yellowtom was already heading in this direction but needed further investment to enable us to grow rapidly. We also see huge opportunities to roll out our approach to many international markets. Joining with the team at WebCertain was an obvious solution meaning we could move much faster.”
Andy Atkins-Krueger, chief executive of York-based Webcertain, will be managing director of Webcertain Local.
He said: “WebCertain is well recognised for its international search marketing services working in 36 languages. We had identified a gap in the market for businesses wanting to very rapidly target local markets internationally and Yellowtom was the obvious vehicle enabling us to very quickly provide an effective solution.
“We aim to put businesses on the map in Manchester, Munich and Moscow, without having to target whole countries.”
Shulmans and Brown Butler advised on the deal.
