Thanks in part to your overwhelming response to my post last Tuesday about Angie's List becoming a Rush Limbaugh sponsor the Business Press is sitting up and taking notice. It seems that this controversy has embroiled Angie's List at a very inopportune time as the company's big stock holders who are hoping to cash out some of their stock as part of a new stock offering. Angie's List made its S-1 filing on Tuesday, the day before I published my post about Angie's List becoming Rush's new sponsor.
Angie’s List Impact On Small Businesses
Published on: Friday, May 04, 2012
Written by: Laurie Kulikowski
Angie's List is a part of the crop of social online companies capitalizing on the trend toward customer-driven recommendations at the local level. Angie's List is competing in a space with Yelp, Yahoo! and Google, among other names, which essentially offer the same services for free. (Yelp tends to be more for restaurants, leisure and hospitality.)
Yet the site has been getting some negative press lately. Stock critics complain that its business model is "unsustainable."
More recently, the company found itself embroiled in controversy over its decision to resume advertising with Rush Limbaugh last month, according to reports, even after the radio host made offensive comments about women in March that led to a defection of advertisers.
Angie's List declined to comment for this story, with a spokesperson saying it was in a quiet period due to the SEC filing. (The company announced Tuesday in the S-1 filing that it plans to raise $10 million from a sale of secondary equity. The proceeds would be used to fund further marketing efforts to drive membership growth as well as working capital, the filing says.)
I'm not sure of all the possible financial ramifications Angie's List created for itself and its investors with this controversy especially at such a sensitive time. I do know that we got their attention. and this is probably being watched by the whole radio advertising industry as a test case.
Angie's List on facebook
I found out a small local bank runs ads on Rush's show, but on a station far enough away to have poor reception in this area, and I listen to Rush on a station with a stronger signal here so I didn't know it until I clicked on this cool tool: Stop Rush