Newspapers team to sell ads

Posted by Jean Yves Chainon on January 10, 2007 at 5:47 PM

Gannett Co., McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co. – US’ three largest newspaper publishers – are planning to sell advertising jointly on each of their newspaper’s websites. When three main competitors decide to partner, it means the whole industry is in a critical situation.

The GMT project (Gannett, McClatchy and Tribune) comes in response to another ad-partnership deal made between Hearst Corp., MediaNewsGroup Inc. and Yahoo. The latter publishers and portal teamed to sell online recruiting classified, and should soon develop a similar ad-sale network.

Many advertisers currently get most of their ads through Yahoo, AOL, or MSN. Google has also recently tested and launched a program so advertisers can buy print ads from more than 50 newspapers on the Google website.

Through this project, dubbed “Open Network,” the publishers hope to attract major national advertisers – such as car and phone companies - by easing the buyer’s process into one-stop shopping. Advertisers will be able to buy into a quantity of newspapers by purchasing on a single website.

"Traditionally print newspaper companies have not worked well together to sell national ads in print," said Jack Williams, president of Gannett Digital. "We intend to sell Internet advertising differently."

The project is open to more partners, as long as these agree to the conditions about ad pricing an placement, said Williams.

For more details, click below.

Source: Wall Street Journal