By: E&P Staff Caroline Little, who last month was named CEO and publisher of the Washington Post. Co.'s Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive unit, sees tremendous growth potential for the Web portal in the near future. If she can figure out how best to work with advertisers, that is.
The biggest areas of expansion, she told Mediapost.com, are in the travel, technology and health/pharmaceutical categories. She also said she expects a good bump in online political advertising later this year.
Little, who succeeded Christopher Schroeder in early January, said the Web sites' advertising base grew almost 60% last year. WPNI, which includes washingtonpost.com and Newsweek.MSNBC.com, focused on attracting more premium, national advertisers for much of 2003.
The latest move in that direction came on Feb. 3, when WPNI beefed up its online registration requests. In addition to basic demographic questions such as age, gender and ZIP code, the site now requests employment information such as job title, responsibilities and type of industry. The more targeted information will, theoretically, allow the site to charge more for advertising and attract premium marketers.
"It's been an evolution -- we wanted to test and make sure that this was something acceptable to our users, and we find that in the first quarter we tend to have a little more flexibility with our inventory," she told Mediapost.
Washingtonpost.com attracted 5.1 million unique visitors in December. WPNI revenue grew 30%, to $46.9 million, in 2003 from $35.9 million in 2002.
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