By: E&P Staff Four top publishing companies will unveil today a one-stop shopping offering for advertisers on local newspaper and TV station websites. They call it quadrantOne. The companies are Hearst, Tribune, Gannett and The New York Times.
"National advertisers have not embraced local (websites) largely because they're fragmented," Dana Hayes, senior vice president for sales at Tribune Interactive, told USA Today. With the new venture, "You don't have to call 100 markets and deal with 100 salespeople."
Hayes said this will have an advantage over Web portals such as Yahoo that offer news from local providers, because "Portals don't know local. We know local."
The Chicago Tribune reported that MediaNews and Cox declined to join the network.
"The new venture," the Tribune observed, "will both overlap and compete with a similar network set up last year by Yahoo; Hearst participates in both groups.
"Notably absent from the quadrantOne network will be Gannett's USAToday.com and the flagship New York Times site, since those properties already have nationwide audience reach."
An excerpt from the USA Today article follows.
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Advertisers can place their messages in specific markets, attach them to subject categories such as sports or business, or connect them to stories about particular subjects.
QuadrantONE won't sell online ads for USA TODAY and The New York Times. Each already reaches a national audience.
Hayes declined to discuss quadrantONE's financing, how revenue will be split, or the ownership stakes of the four backers.
The company plans to enlist additional local news providers, although Hayes says they are not looking to bring in any additional partners.
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