R.H. Donnelley Corp. said Thursday that it has agreed to purchase search and advertising provider Business.com for $345 million in cash.

Santa Monica-based Business.com, which was started in 1999 by Jake Winebaum and Sky Dayton, uses its cadre of sites, such as Work.com and the Business.com Advertising Network, to direct potential business traffic to service and product providers. Winebaum and Dayton bought the domain name for $7.5 million; a price many in the industry felt was far too high.

Cary, N.C.-based R.H. Donnelly said that Business.com is profitable and is expected to generate more than $50 million in sales for 2007.

R.H. Donnelley’s Chief Executive David Swanson said in a conference call that Business.com's ad platform and network “will allow us to improve margins by provisioning search engine marketing advertisers on our own sites and our partner sites first as opposed to just the major search engines.”

The move shows how traditional print phone directories are looking to integrate their networks to maximize the performance of Web-based directories, experts said.

Business.com's Winebaum will be appointed president of R.H. Donnelley's interactive unit – Winebaum also managed Disney.com and ESPN.com as chairman of Burbank-based Walt Disney Co.’s Buena Vista Internet Group before forming Business.com.

Dayton founded EarthLink in 1993 and later joined Winebaum to found eCompanies, which has served as an Internet incubator for companies like JAMDAT Mobile and Business.com and now serves as a holding company for those investments.