By: Lucia Moses The Newspaper National Network (NNN) has hired a cable industry veteran as it prepares to expand from four to 15 the number of national ad categories it will target in an attempt to grab share from television, particularly cable.
"Cable is the medium that's seen the greatest market share gain over the last five years," NNN President and CEO Jason Klein said. "Television is in the bull's eye of our new focus."
The ad sales organization, owned by 23 newspaper companies and the Newspaper Association of America, will start targeting the new categories next year. Klein wouldn't disclose the NNN's financial goals for the new push.
As the new senior vice president of marketing, Mary Ellen Holden will create custom ad programs for those new categories and oversee a new NNN ad campaign set to launch in trade magazines in mid-October.
National advertisers spent just 3% of their total media budget in newspapers last year. "The thrust of it is to have a much more hard-hitting message comparing newspapers to television and magazines," Klein said of the campaign.
Klein also announced the hire of News Corp. vet Jerry Fragetti as senior vice president of media and operations to handle newspaper relations, media relations, and strategic alliances. Klein said Fragetti will aim, among other things, to reduce to 24 hours the time it takes to respond to an advertiser's request for an ad proposal by working out requirements such as rates in advance with newspapers. Now, he said, the response time "can take weeks, and that's just not acceptable."
Fragetti and Holden will divide the duties handled by former Senior Vice President Bob Watson, who resigned earlier this year.
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