Yahoo is welcoming several new members to its Newspaper Consortium. These are Freedom Communications’ flagship newspaper, Orange County (Calif.) Register and The Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colo.; the North Jersey Media Group’s The Record and Herald News; and The San Diego Union-Tribune.
“This longest lasting and largest coalition of local U.S. newspapers is bringing display advertising to the search-dominated local ad market, and continues to grow and thrive as more and more members deliver game-changing results,” a spokesperson for Yahoo tells murdok. Here some interesting stats he shared with us:
– Several newspapers have topped $1 million in weekly sales of Yahoo targeted ads
– 288 newspaper sites have launched Yahoo’s core search products: contextual-advertising, paid-search, and web search;
– 350 newspapers now receive more than 23 million referrals a month from the distribution of news headlines across the Yahoo! network and through its services, including Yahoo Front Page, Yahoo News, and Yahoo Finance, as well as across Yahoo Mobile and on Yahoo Messenger
– More than 160 newspapers are now live on APT from Yahoo, Yahoo’s ad management platform, since its launch in September 2008 with two pilot newspapers
– More than 4,000 newspaper sales representatives have participated in sales training sessions provided by Yahoo.
“Selling targeted and measurable advertising campaigns to local businesses is really delivering results for our newspaper partners,” says Lem Lloyd, vice president, U.S. Partnerships, Yahoo Inc. “With more and more local advertisers shifting dollars from traditional media to online, local advertising is a great growth opportunity for the newspaper industry.”
The Consortium is made up of 814 newspapers from 43 media holding companies, and accounts for 51% of all Sunday circulation. So how do these organizations view the consortium? Here’s what a few of them had to say:
Freedom Interactive
“The Yahoo Newspaper Consortium provides exciting opportunities to enhance the accessibility and usefulness of Freedom’s Web sites for visitors and advertisers,” said Douglas S. Bennett, president, Freedom Interactive. “Through this alliance, we offer our advertising customers a very sophisticated level of targeting by demographics, interest categories and ZIP code-level geography, which will lead to even more impact and returns from their advertising investments.”
North Jersey Media Group
“Our site, NorthJersey.com, is the top local news site in the North Jersey region with about one million local and national unique visitors monthly,” said Stephen A. Borg, president and publisher, North Jersey Media Group. “We look forward to taking full advantage of Yahoo!’s capacity to expand our online reach even further, and we’re especially interested in the growth opportunities from Yahoo’s behavioral targeting capabilities.”
San Diego Union Tribune
“The partnership between the Union-Tribune and Yahoo will allow us to provide our advertising partners with increased online reach and opportunities for behavioral targeting,” said Ed Moss, president and publisher, The San Diego Union-Tribune. “The combination of SignOnSanDiego.com with Yahoo’s robust network and data capabilities, will allow us to offer advertising packages that can reach 83 percent of the San Diego market.”
Yahoo says the top performers in the consortium are The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the New York Daily News. The former increased its online audience reach in Atlanta from 15% to 80%.
