By: E&P Staff and The Associated Press Yahoo Inc. will work with seven newspaper groups to share online advertising in a deal that could help newspapers tap into the lucrative online ad market. Over 150 newspapers in 38 states will participate in the deal, reported Sunday on the Web sites of The New York Times and some of the newspapers involved.
The groups that have signed on include Cox Newspapers Inc., Belo Corp., Hearst Corp., the E.W. Scripps Co., MediaNews Group Inc., Lee Enterprises and the Journal Register Co. The partnership will start in December with Yahoo's HotJobs service and move to other types of online advertising.
Among the newspapers that will participate are the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; the San Jose Mercury News; The Dallas Morning News and the Austin American-Statesman.
A conference call featuring members of the "consortium" will be held Monday at 1 p.m. ET, to be covered by E&P.
The deal could help the struggling newspaper industry increase lagging ad revenues.
?There has been a big question asked for a while as to how newspapers will navigate the online future,? William Dean Singleton, vice chairman and chief executive of MediaNews Group, told The New York Times. ?I think this is the answer to that question.?
John Morton, the industry analyst, told the paper, ?Newspapers now fully recognize that the Internet is a threat, and this is a way for newspapers to try to preserve their franchise, with a partner that has huge online distribution."
Among the first to respond at length was Peter M. Zollman, founder of the consulting firm Classified Intelligence. Zollman wrote, ?If the relationship works as the companies hope, it could have a profound, positive impact on both Yahoo and the participating newspapers.
?The newspapers will have a new outlet for their local content and recruitment ads, while they should be able to reach a sizeable new audience and generate significant new revenue. For Yahoo, it can provide much deeper local content, bring HotJobs up from also-ran status in the recruitment field to a competitive position, and expand audience, revenue and the ?stickiness? factor....
?The timing was right for this deal because newspapers have been trying to find the right online products to offer their advertisers, and Yahoo had two former newspaper executives leading its classified marketplace team trying to find a win for both sides....
?What?s the impact on CareerBuilder.com and Monster.com? Both will remain strong players. CareerBuilder may try again to expand its newspaper network, or it may keep adding sales reps in local markets where it?s not affiliated with the newspaper. And Monster.com will continue to talk to newspapers, and other media outlets, to develop a local presence to go along with its tremendous brand strengths. Although Yahoo HotJobs is launching a major initiative, it?s still a distant No. 3 in the U.S. online recruitment race....
?Many of the newspapers involved are local leaders in recruitment advertising, including the Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, and Atlanta Journal-Constitution. They have offered outstanding recruitment products in both print and online, and will continue to do so. Now they?ll be participating in a national product that offers a broader range of products, and much more extensive reach, than the newspaper and its local online product alone.?
Financial terms of the arrangement weren't released.
"Most local newspapers have done a pretty good job of generating local revenue into (their) sites," said Leon Levitt, vice president for digital media for Cox Newspapers. "It's so much harder to generate national revenue because a lot of advertisers don't want to deal with 100 different newspapers. This will make it simple."
Earlier this month Google Inc. announced plans to sell advertising space in 50 top newspapers, giving papers a new potential revenue source, offering online advertisers a new way to show off their products in print and helping Google expand its reach.
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