Newspaper National Network has 'inside track' on selling ads for NCN p. 10

By: John Consoli Newspaper Association of America-sponsored
organization could sell online ads for
new newspaper company partnership sp.

NEWSPAPER NATIONAL Network (NNN), the organization created last year to facilitate the placement of national advertising in newspapers, "has the inside track" on selling advertising for the recently formed New Century Network (NCN), according to Newspaper Association of America (NAA) outgoing chairman Charles Brumback.
NNN is sponsored by NAA. NCN is a partnership formed last week by eight of the nation's largest newspaper companies. Its goal is to create a national network of online local newspapers.
NCN initially announced its mission would be to jump-start the newspaper industry's transition to online services, by creating a compatible network allowing affiliate papers coast-to-coast to share information. Any newspaper can become an affiliate.
Brumback's announcement, during the opening-day session of the annual NAA convention in New Orleans, revealed that another goal of NCN will be to sell national advertising on its online network.
"When the day comes that we have built this affiliate base and market penetration level to an audience attractive to national advertisers, it might make sense to capitalize on the resources of NNN. But, in the short to medium term, the focus of NCN is local, local, local, as far as selling advertising is concerned," said NCN's temporary CEO Peter Winter, who is also a vice president of Atlanta-based Cox Newspapers.
Winter explained that "one of the key consulting services to be provided by NCN will be advice on the most viable forms of online advertising and online direct response marketing."
This set of services, Winter said, "will obviously include assistance in designing local, online ad rate cards."
He said that, as local services grow, NCN will use these rate cards as the basis for a one order/one bill system designed to simplify multimarket or national network ad buys.
Winter said NCN will initially "not construct and package a separate network rate card."
For the "foreseeable future," he added, "the NCN rate card will be a compilation of local rate cards."
?(Charles Brumback) [Photo]