e-Type Services and Creative Circle Media Solutions team up to offer clients more resources

Both vendors are committed to working in the best interests of their clients and the industry

Premium Pages, web-based features pages with expanding topics and content, is ideal to support subscription drives, local ad sponsorships, programmatic advertising or branded content initiatives, is now available to eType Services customers at preferred rates.
Premium Pages, web-based features pages with expanding topics and content, is ideal to support subscription drives, local ad sponsorships, programmatic advertising or branded content initiatives, is now available to eType Services customers at preferred rates.
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Creative Circle Media Solutions and eType Services have announced they will be supporting one another’s clients by cross-selling some of their services.

eType Services will offer Creative Circle’s Premium Pages, on-site digital sales blitzes and specialized apps to its clients, while Creative Circle will offer eType’s mobile apps to its clients.

“We may find other ways to cooperate or offer other services where it is in the best interests of our clients,” said Bill Ostendorf, president and founder of Creative Circle Media Solutions. “This doesn’t mean we won’t compete or continue to develop new and better solutions for the industry on our own, just that we’ve agreed it’s in everyone’s best interests to offer these options to all of our clients.”

“We’ve always believed in giving our clients the best options available and eType Services has a long tradition of working with other companies to assemble the best range of services we can,” said Thad Swiderski, president of eType Services. “We’re always focused on what’s best for our customers and what’s best for small newspapers.”

One challenge for the newspaper industry is that its vendors often don’t act in the best interests of the industry or their clients. Many vendors won’t integrate with others or cooperate with competitors. Few are interested in supporting or initiating industry-wide initiatives or coordination.

“Frankly, most vendors are threatened to even talk to a competitor, let alone share information or create integrations. Both of our companies have always taken the opposite approach. The more vendors we cooperate with and integrate with, the stronger we all become and the better we serve the industry,” said Ostendorf. “It was an easy conversation with Thad to find ways to help all our clients.”

Premium Pages from Creative Circle provides a range of digital special sections on topics such as food, seniors, travel, green living, money matters, kids & family and health. Content is updated daily and page layouts change regularly, too. Publishers can add their own content or advertising to the pages.

“These are engaging web pages that small newspapers can use to entice more subscribers, sell sponsorships or even get a start on branded content,” said Swiderski. “Stories can also be used in print.”

Creative Circle will be creating more pages soon covering books, outdoors, automotive, entertainment, Spanish language features, real estate, puzzles & trivia and even CBD. It’s also expanding the number of sources it draws on to create the pages.

The pages can run on any website and can accommodate local ads, national programmatic ads, local news or features and branded content. Newspapers don’t have to display all the pages offered.

“Our national research showed these features categories cover topics readers want more of from their local newspapers,” said Ostendorf. “Small newspapers can’t provide more staffing to create this content so we’ve created a way to deliver it to them while opening new revenue opportunities and creative ad displays.”

Meanwhile,  eType Services clients will now have priority access to Creative Circle’s limited inventory of dates for its popular in-market digital sales blitzes.

Sean Finch, Creative Circle’s VP/Sales, has been leading in-market sales blitzes for nearly 20 years, generating millions of dollars in new, digital revenue for small newspapers across the country. Working closely with local sales teams, Finch helps identify clients, reviews rates, set up meetings and visits advertisers with local sales reps to close new digital sales.

“Newspapers are not maximizing their opportunities to sell digital advertising,” said Finch. “Businesses are ready to buy digital advertising but local reps often need help understanding the value and potential in their own websites. When local reps connect us to the right decision makers, we can close deals at higher rates that most local teams are not closing.”

eType Services will also be able to provide Creative Circle’s targeted apps to its clients with preferred pricing, including its popular election and high school graduation apps.

Creative Circle’s election app helps newspapers monetize local elections by allowing candidates to build a page about their campaigns on the newspaper’s site as well as get a listing in a candidate directory. The app can quickly create a searchable directory of local candidates and that directory can be exported for use in print for election special sections. Then, on election day, the app helps upgrade coverage by providing lists of winners, charts showing vote totals and background information on all the candidates.

Creative Circle, which has never developed a mobile app, will offer the eType Services mobile app to its clients.

eType Services can provide dedicated mobile apps on both app stores, which are a growing and affordable technology that can help community newspapers expand their reach. Readers want a direct connection to their paper and an app on their phone creates that connection. Mobile apps from eType Services allow push notifications and mobile only ads as well as one touch access to the news. Creative Circle will integrate the eType mobile apps into its client’s web platforms to automate the posting of information.

About eType Services:

eType Services (www.etypeservices.com) is a leading provider of digital products and services for community newspapers in the United States. eType Services specializes in news websites, e-Editions and news apps. eType Services also helps papers with circulation and production. We try to help small papers by providing service matched with state of the art software. 

eType Services’ easy-to-use, affordable solutions help eliminate the barriers to entry for small and medium-sized newspapers seeking to reach more readers — and increase revenue — by uniting their digital and print strategies.  

eType Services works with over 600 papers and acts as a digital team for papers too small to afford a digital team on site. 

Contact: Thad Swiderski, president, at 512-687-9055 or thad@etypeservices.com.

About Creative Circle Media Solutions:

Creative Circle (www.creativecirclemedia.com) is dedicated to helping locally and family owned media outlets thrive. It is one of the newspaper industry's leading consulting, training, design and software firms with a 35-year history of happy clients on three continents.

Creative Circle has led the redesign and re-engineering of more than 750 print publications and 600 media-related websites and has led workshops in 23 countries, training thousands of journalists, publishers and ad staffers on a wide range of topics. 

Like our clients, Creative Circle has had to shift from being primarily a print-oriented company to a digital leader and has created a full line of innovative web software solutions for media companies, including a dynamic and user-oriented CMS, user-generated content, classifieds, calendars, hyper-local targeting, programmatic, branded content, obituaries, paywall and reverse publishing solutions. 

We also provide "creative outsourcing" to help companies that don't have easy access to experienced media designers or editors to create high-end content. We can create effective advertising, manage websites or produce whole publications.  

Our goal is to make excellence affordable to media outlets of all sizes.

Contact: Bill Ostendorf, president, at 401-455-1555 or bill@creativecirclemedia.com.

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