State of Local

Greg Sterling wrote today about the sudden awakening of newspapers in response to years of eroding subscribership and the loss of classified and regular advertising dollars. As a result, the newspapers have been aggressive in their pursuit of joining consortiums (e.g., Yahoo) and aligning strategically (e.g., Blogrunner, Zillow) which are both good tactical first steps. But why are the newspapers stopping there?  Why aren’t they pursuing cross-platform partnerships with equal zeal? Shouldn’t they also be thinking about partnering with the local TV stations, the local radio outlets and more? Singularly, probably none of these has enough clout to outright “own” a market, but combined, couldn’t they build the kind of engaged local audience that advertisers simply couldn’t dismiss?  From a small business perspective, just having a shared business profile might save me countless hours and I can continue to work with a trusted outlet. And better still, my ads are going to reach many, many more eyeballs than I am accustomed to. Sign me up!

I think that the traditional media has for so long competed head-to-head against one another, that the notion of now working together must still be too frightening. Granted, it’d be a lot of work to coordinate such an endeavor, but cooperating and aggregating content sure seems to me to be a better way to remain viable in the consumer’s and avertiser’s eyes. It’s got to be tiring to have to fight for content ownership all the time, especially when the end result is you’ll only own a small piece of it.

CBS Outdoor has got a pretty cool new hyper-local, multi-platform test going on in New York that bears watching. CBS created a free 20-block WiFi area in Manhattan using billboards and bus stops to support the zone. Anyone accessing the WiFi on laptop or cellphone gets an ad-supported home page with local and national news, sports, weather, etc., and allows users to perform uber-local searches for area businesses, entertainment options and more. From an advertising perspective, only people within this somewhat limited geographic radius are going to see your ads, so the potential for conversion–or action–on behalf of the consumer should be at a premium. Health and weather permitting, all of these consumers are practically within walking distance. A deli could post a “half off on a Reuben” ad at 11:00AM and by 1:00PM be able to see the ROI on it’s investment. Can’t get much more immediate feedback than that.

The Local Onliner  had an interesting post about Freedom Interactive’s efforts to chase the local advertising longtail.

Smart move by Freedom Interactive to go after medium-sized businesses. For those local advertisers out there who can’t afford offline rates, online buys are a solid way to get associated with trusted local media brands. From the publisher’s standpoint, it’s not just incremental revenue but a way to get new clients in the door.

It will be interesting to see how margins hold up as the sales force travels down the local advertiser longtail.

Regarding “tangible results,” one has to imagine that, once advertisers and agencies get past their obsession over click-through rates, online conversion measurements will be deemed far superior than trying to track down whether a print coupon was used at the local furniture store.

According to paid.Content, Yahoo has added 17 new members to its newspaper consortium. Yahoo’s newspaper partners now include more than 400 dailies and 140 members. This appears to be the largest such consortium, but not the only one.  In fact, last month The Tribune and three of Yahoo’s members (Gannett, Hearst MediaNews Group and Cox Newspapers) talked openly about forming an online newspaper ad-sharing network while the Washington Post and the New York Times are also looking at combining with other papers. Yahoo’s consortium formed a year ago and forged a strategic partnership for online recruitment advertising through Yahoo’s HotJobs site and has since expanded to include common online advertising network distribution, online text ads, and content sharing between Yahoo! and consortium newspapers.  

Clearly these partnerships speak to the old adage of ‘keeping your friends close, but your enemies closer.’ Not so long ago the portals were seen a huge threat to the daily newspapers’ bottom line and now they’re partnering with Yahoo like crazy. Why? Perhaps it’s Yahoo’s ability to add cache and to help bring scale and attractiveness to advertisers? After all, if you can’t beat them you may as well join them.  Newspaper circulation numbers dropped 2.6% recently according the to Newspaper Association of America which has forced the industry’s hand. To combat the perception that papers provide less value to consumers, many in the industry are now combining online readers with their print-reading brethren to woo advertiser interest. The problem with this tactic is that advertisers have often deemed off-line readers less valuable. With all the consolidating and consortium-forming going on, the numbers may simply become too large for the advertisers to dismiss. 

Today Zillow announced a deal to syndicate their real-estate listings to a consortium of 11 print newspaper publishers, representing 282 newspapers including: Hearst, Media General, and E.W. Scripps.

Local advertisers who place their print and online listings with the newspapers will be able to choose to have their listings and open house ads also displayed on Zillow, one of the largest online real estate sites. the alliance is expected to roll out in the first half of 2008.

Many of the newspaper companies in the planned Zillow agreement are part of a newspaper consortium, which formed a year ago and forged a strategic partnership with Yahoo! for online recruitment advertising. It has since expanded to include common online advertising network distribution, online text ads, and content sharing between Yahoo! and consortium newspapers. This new initiative extends the alliance of these newspaper companies to the real estate sector.

This is a smart move by these newspapers are they move to scale: creating partnerships that give them enough users to matter to local advertisers.

See more coverage at : Screenwerk

NYTimes.com has supplemented its technology coverage with popular tech blogs from Blogrunner, the content aggregator it purchased last year. In the saturated online news market – where portals now occupy three of the top ten news spots, and blogs and aggregators continue to emerge – the strategy for blue chip news brands becomes: If you can’t beat them, buy them (if you can afford them), integrate them and become them. Individually, news blogs and aggregators garner high praise but low unique visitors. The marriage between big eyeballs and big functionality makes sense.

In early October, MSNBC.com bought Newsvine for its social networking and rating capabilities. For the Times, the play is to broaden its offerings beyond its editorial walls. Clearly, the reward of maintaining itself as a top news destination comes at the risk of introducing competitive technology sites to consumers. Additionally, the Times must be careful to protect its journalistic image, “managing the stylistic tension between blogging and formal article writing,” as Greg Sterling puts it. Ultimately, this is a smart move for the Times. The trend is clear: The winners in news won’t be the sites that simply create and market their own content, but the ones that bring consumers the best content and functionality available.