By: E&P Staff Media General, which has suffered some of the newspaper industry's biggest ad revenue declines because of its many newspapers are in slumping Florida, said Wednesday that its online advertising position is strengthening.
In remarks prepared for its presentation at the UBS Global Media and Communications conference in New York City, Media General executives say online advertising is accounting for a growing percentage of total ad revenue, and that it's ad-sharing partnership with Yahoo is paying off.
In 2008, Media General expects to more than $7 million in revenues from its Yahoo partnership, mostly from the HotJobs sites.
Media General has launched Yahoo's behaviorally targeted APT system in four markets.
"So far in 2008, we've booked nearly $1 million in revenue this way, exceeding expectations," COO and Executive Vice President Reid Ashe said. "Soon we'll be able to sell behaviorally targeted advertising on our own pages, as well, using Yahoo's APT ad serving and management system. We'll start with a pilot site in April and complete the installation by the third quarter of 2009."
Revenue generated by the Interactive Media Division will represent 5% the company's total revenues in 2008, and should account for 7% in 2009, Ashe added.
"Local online advertising is up 40% year-to-date, driven by focused sales campaigns that have sold $3 million in advertising and added 450 new local online customers this year," he noted.
Ashe said Media General is also benefiting from the "timely" acquisition last March of DealTaker.com: "This is Dealtaker's busy season, and we're working hard to take advantage. On Black Friday, our visitors were up 90% from last year, and commission revenue increased 167%. Traffic in November was up 80%. For the nine months that we will own DealTaker.com this year, we expect revenues of $6.5 million."
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