By: Jennifer Saba The Daily News in Bowling Green, Ky., is one of the first newspapers to chart the "mash-up" concept with classified ads. The 21,111-daily circ paper is combining data from Google Maps and yard-sale ads from its classified section. The result: an online map that pinpoints the exact location of the sales.
A reader can zoom in for cross streets, or zoom out to see how many other yard sales are in a given area. Click on the virtual "tack" and a window pops up with the details of the ad. "This is our first foray into using this," says Daily News General Manager Mark Van Patten. "We think it has a lot of potential."
A "mash-up" takes data from different sites and puts them together in a new and meaningful way.
Van Patten happened upon the idea on a blog called mapbuilder.net. "This guy was doing a lot of Google Maps, primarily with static data," he says. "I sent him an e-mail and pitched him an idea" of building an application that the Daily News could use.
At first, the paper applied the concept to the news side for crimes and car accidents, but Van Patten thought it could enhance revenue, especially in the classified section. For yard sales, people tend to advertise for only one day. But now, the paper is using the mapping as an upsell: run an ad for two days, and the paper will include the ad's address in its map. "We hardly get turned down," adds Van Patten, who implemented the concept in early April. "Once people see it, they like it."
On average, it costs $12 to $15 a day to run a basic yard-sale ad, but the paper can net as much as $30 with add-ons. The Daily News will run the mash-up feature through October.
"I don't think there's any question that publishers should be moving in this direction," says Barry Parr, a media analyst with online intel firm JupiterResearch, especially since online-classified competitors such as Microsoft's Windows Live Expo and Google Base are already experimenting with the feature.
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