Thursday, March 20, 2008

Newspapers Team Up for Survival

The Internet has been the worst thing for newspapers since television, and publishers are teaming up to turn their websites into assets. Overall revenue at newspapers have been in a downward spiral for a decade as online revenue hasn't kept up with print losses.

Quadrantone is a new ad network started by Gannett, Hearst, Tribune and others that aggregates the audience from categories including health, business news, technology, sports, personal finance and auto. These broad verticals give advertisers the chance to reach millions of readers in a category.

The keys to success for this venture are the ability to track and target users across the network and to geotarget users.

The biggest newspaper sites reach national audiences, and publishers need to target their audience based on where the people are reading. I visit the newspaper websites from 5 different cities on a regular basis, is your experience the same? Many former Chicagoans still read the Tribune and people from all over the country read the NY Times. Targeting readers in Orange County -- no matter which newspaper they are reading -- allows the network to charge higher CPMs.

Allowing these users to be tracked across publisher sites allows the network to avoid repeated ads and observe behaviors. For example, people may read auto news on several websites, and that information must be captured for the network to succeed.

Quadrantone has only been around for a month and so far the website doesn't mention targeting. Hopefully the advertisers and publishers are asking these same questions.

Via Yahoo News.

Posted By John Gartner at 08:55 AM
Permanent Link: Newspapers Team Up for Survival | Comments (1)

(1) Comments on Newspapers Team Up for Survival

I stopped reading the newspaper when 20+ articles were AP and a handful were local. The only value of a newspaper to me is its connection to the local region.

These guys keep widening their focus instead of narrowing it and they are cutting their own throats. They keep thinking it's all about content and the number of eyeballs. It's not.

Comments by Douglas Karr : Thursday, March 20, 2008 at 10:22 AM

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