By: Jennifer Saba A new company aims to help the thousands of news Web sites springing up in local markets. GrowthSpur, which officially launched on July 30, is positioned at the many journalists and other media entrepreneurs who are striking out on their own as well as newspapers and broadcasters.
Founded by several media executives including Mark Potts, who serves as CEO,
GrowthSpur offers tools to help these local news and media sites get off the ground and make revenue.
"Smaller advertisers are looking for access to customers near them and are frustrated that the bigger sites don't sell to them," Potts said. "They are out there and want to be online. No one has asked them."
In a town with say 40,000 people, a properly managed local site can make $100,000 in revenue, GrowthSpur contends.
GrowthSpur provides these sites with best practices in ad sales, best-of-breed tools to manage business like ad-server platforms, and a local network where several sites can group together and offer advertisers buys across many properties.
Potts
said that many small advertisers are interested in reaching people across several counties or areas.
Along with Potts, GrowthSpur's
team includes Dave Chase, owner of Sun Valley Online and former Sidewalk.com executive; Tom Davidson, former vice president of Tribune Interactive; Jennifer McFadden formerly of NYTimes Digital; and Mel Taylor, a Web ad sales consultant.
GrowthSpur takes a cut of the revenue it helps brings in to the site. There are no upfront fees.
"There are a lot of former journalists starting these sites right now," said Potts, a former Washington Post Digital executive and co-founder of Backfence.com. "They don't always think hard enough about what the business side is like. Six months in they are like, 'Oh, wait, we have to make a living out of this.' It can be done."
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here