Local online search machines and web-directories are an effective advertising platform, especially for small and medium-sized companies. The advertising capabilities of suchen.de were found to by particularly useful by ‘Initiative Mittelstand.’ The management of the local search engine suchen.de, t-info GmbH, received the award for Innovation, in the category “Internet Services” for their advertising facility.

As announced on the website of Initiative Mittelstand, t-info has been honored for tailoring click-based advertising (a standard feature in virtually all the major search engines) to the local search sphere. This means the user only sees an ad, when the content is relevant to his local search query, whether locality, service or product specific. (See our post.)

The advantages serve both the user and the advertising enterprise – the user only comes across relevant search and advertising hits, resulting from his search, and the advertiser is able to target location-specific potential clients, as a result of clear market need (as reflected by the user’s search criteria). Through this specificity or target-group, wasted revenue is reduced and accordingly advertising costs to the companies.

Launched in 2004, the annual Innovation Prize honors the most innovative and relevant products, solutions and services, specifically for the small and medium-sized business sector in the arena of information and telecommunications technology. In 2008, submissions for consideration for the awards topped the 1600 mark, eclipsing all former submissions [see Press Release].