Yahoo Aligns with Newspapers on Ads
Yahoo has forged a strategic partnership with more than 150 daily newspapers across the US, the first benefit of which will be a tight integration with Yahoo's HotJobs service. In addition, the consortium also plans to work on advertising and content partnerships.
Belo, Cox, Hearst, Journal, Lee Enterprises, MediaNews and E.W. Scripps have agreed to join the partnership. This includes major dailies such as the San Francisco Chronicle, the Houston Chronicle, and the Denver Post, among others.
The deal covers four areas, including advertising, search, local information, and conent. All papers will use Yahoo's platform to sell online advertising for newspaper Web sites, and will use its search functionality to create new monetization opportunities.
In turn, Yahoo will offer the newspapers' Web content, and will help syndicate their content through Yahoo's network of Web properties, it said.
"This is a transformational deal for the newspaper industry," MediaNews CEO William Dean Singleton, and Hearst president and CEO Victor Ganzi said in a joint statement. "This relationship will significantly extend our local assets to a much wider audience, and gives us the technology required to fulfill the growing demands of advertisers and consumers."
Such a partnership will give Yahoo an extensive foothold in the local online advertising market. Overall, ad revenues are expected to nearly quadruple, from $3.4 billion this year to $12.4 billion by 2010.
"We believe the local segment is largely untapped and provides significant opportunities to expand audience engagement and subsequently grow local advertising," Yahoo chairman and CEO Terry Semel said.
HotJobs also stands to benefit greatly from the deal. All papers in the consortium would switch their online job listings to a co-branded version of the site, expanding Yahoo HotJobs' visibility in the market. Additionally, job recruiters would benefit from having their listings syndicated through the entire network if they so desire.
"We believe that this arrangement is a potential game changer for Yahoo! HotJobs, providing an enormous database of additional job listings and giving local newspapers a dramatically larger audience," Yahoo marketplaces senior vice president Hilary Schneider said.