In a move to bolster its advertising business, AT&T announced today that it will acquire Ingenio, a privately held provider of Pay Per Callsearch and directory technology. AT&T plans to integrate Ingenio’s Pay Per Call offerings into its directory service and local search-advertising portfolio, including the yellowpage.com network, AT&T Real Yellow Pages and 1-800-Yellow Pages.

Founded in 1999, Ingenio was developed as a performance-based advertising company. Marketers advertise their business or services in online search listings linked to a unique 1-800 number and only pay for their ads when a consumer dials the number. The company’s Pay Per Call service is an advertising platform that allows businesses to manage their ad programs and generate phone leads.

AT&T said that integrating Ingenio’s Pay Per Call technology will enable it to take advantage of the growing trend toward performance-based advertising by affording advertisers another tool to reach their customers. The technology allows advertisers to purchase leads across online, mobile or print media whether or not they have a Web site.

The purchase of Ingenio will also help AT&T compete with Google’s directory services.

Mark Britto, president and CEO of Ingenio, said the company has built and deployed innovative products that help the services economy flourish online but, until the acquisition, has lacked the scale to bring the solution to market in the biggest possible way.

President and CEO of yellowpages.com, Charles Stubbs, will oversee the integration of Ingenio within AT&T’s yellowpages.com. AT&T expects to retain Ingenio’s management team, and the transaction is not expected to significantly affect AT&T’s earnings.

Terms of the transaction, which is expected to close in January 2008, were not disclosed.