Business information search engine ZoomInfo of Waltham, MA (DEMO 07) has spun out its six-month-old business demographics ad targeting business as an independent company called, Bizo, Inc., which expects to introduce a business-to-business ad network for Web publishers this summer.

Investors of ZoomInfo, which includes venture capital firms FlagshipVentures, Venrock Associates, and Vulcan Capital that provide US$7 million, became investors of Bizo, according to Bryan Burdick, Zoominfo's president.

Because the businesses are different, having them legally independent makes it easier for each company to determine its market value in case of future acquisition or other changes, Burdick said. He said a similar spin off strategy worked well when Card Scan originally spun off ZoomInfo.

ZoomInfo provided a loan of an undisclosed amount so Bizo could continue product development, relocate to San Francisco,and eventually add to its seven-person staff, said Russell M. Glass,Bozo's chief executive officer. Bizo is also working with another undisclosed partner, Glass said.

Glass had served as senior vice president of the ad targeting business unit while at ZoomInfo. Prior to ZoomInfo, he was the CEO and founder of AGEA Corp., a wireless middleware and messaging company bought by Avalon Digital Marketing Systems. Glass also worked in product marketing and sales for Trilogy Software, an enterprise software company.

ZoomInfo plans on providing Bizo data from its 41 million people and four million company profiles to Bizo as well as advertise its personnel recruitment search services, Glass said. The data sharing provides Bizo a competitive advantage.

"There's very little out there for business-to-business marketers -just a couple of networks and none of them delivering targeted audiences," Glass said. "The primary concern of a b-to-b marketer is where are you now."

Competing against companies such as Dunn & Bradstreet's Hoover business search, ZoomInfo generated $16 million in revenue in 2007 from about 3,000 customers, up from more than $10 million in 2006, and had a 14% operating margin creating "a couple of million" in net profits, Burdick said. ZoomInfo employs 102 people.

Of ZoomInfo's three remaining business units - recruiting, sales intelligence, and search - it is sales intelligence that is the biggest market and least susceptible to the current general economic slowdown.Sales intelligence will be the company's primary focus for new products in the near-term, Burdick said.

While today ZoomInfo mines the Web for information about people for employment recruiters and others, the next product challenge is developing software that "finds people who don't have a significant Web presence," Burdick said.