Membership Increases as Newspapers Deliver Local Online Results From Yahoo! Partnership
SUNNYVALE, Calif.,(RPRN) 6/16/2009-— Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) today announced that five newspapers — Freedom Communications’ flagship newspaper, Orange County (Calif.) Register and TheGazette in Colorado Springs, Colo.; the North Jersey Media Group’s The Record and Herald News; and The San Diego Union-Tribune. — have joined the Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium. Since launching in November 2006 with 176 newspapers, Yahoo!’s industry-leading partnership with America’s local newspapers has more than quadrupled in size to 814 newspapers accounting for 51% of all Sunday circulation.1
The Consortium has helped participating newspapers increase their share of online ad spend in the growing local online ad market by leveraging Yahoo!’s advertising platform technology, massive audience reach and highly engaged community.2 It also has enabled the newspapers’ sales forces to sell Yahoo! targeted ads to their local clients.
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
The Newspaper Consortium initially focused on providing its original 176 member newspapers with a powerful local and national recruitment network through Yahoo! HotJobs. It has since expanded to include search, content distribution and sales partnerships. Currently:
• 592 newspapers have selected Yahoo! HotJobs as their exclusive online recruitment solution;
• 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!.
Member newspapers, large and small, have been delivering results. The Consortium’s top sales performers include The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which, combined with Yahoo!, increased its online audience reach in Atlanta from 15 percent to 80 percent, and the New York Daily News, which continues to see a steady growth in traffic to its site from sharing its content with Yahoo!. In addition, small- to medium-sized newspapers, such as The Evansville Courier Press in Evansville, Ind., have broken the myth that ad sales are tied to circulation. It recently sold $1.1 million of Yahoo! targeted ads during a one-week sales blitz.
“Selling targeted and measurable advertising campaigns to local businesses is really delivering results for our newspaper partners,” said 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.”
About Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet brand and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide. Yahoo! is focused on powering its communities of users, advertisers, publishers, and developers by creating indispensable experiences built on trust. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit pressroom.yahoo.com or the company’s blog, Yodel Anecdotal.
(1) Other Newspaper Consortium members are: A.H. Belo Corp., Bakersfield Californian, Black Press, Boston Globe Electronic Publishing, Buffalo News, Calkins Media, Inc., Columbus Dispatch, The Columbian Publishing Company, Cox Newspapers, The Day Publishing Company, The E.W. Scripps Company, GateHouse Media, Inc., Hearst Newspapers, Herald Media, Inc., Independent Newspapers, Journal Register Company, Lee Enterprises, McClatchy Company, Media General, Inc., MediaNews Group, Inc., Morris Communications Company LLC, New York Daily News, New York Times Regional Group, Oklahoma Publishing Group, Paddock Publications Inc, Paxton Media Group, Philadelphia Media Holdings LLC, Shaw Newspapers, Stephens Media, Sun Times Company, The Day Publishing Company, Times-Shamrock Communications, The Times Publishing Company, the Tribune Review Publishing Company, and Yankton Media.
The newspapers represented by Newspaper Consortium members include major market dailies such as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Boston Globe, The Commercial Appeal (Memphis), The Dallas Morning News, The Denver Post, The Florida Times-Union, Houston Chronicle, The Miami Herald, New Haven Register, Orange County Register, The Philadelphia Daily News and The Philadelphia Inquirer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News,The Sacramento Bee, St. Petersburg Times, and The Tampa Tribune.
(2) ComScore, April 2009: Yahoo! attracted 149 million unique visitors in April. Yahoo! has the largest share of online time compared with other Internet destinations, with Yahoo! visitors averaging 29.1 visits, and an average 4.8 hours on the site.
SOURCE: Yahoo! Inc.
Yahoo! Inc.
Brigida Bergkamp, 408-594-9617 or 408-336-0524
brigida@yahoo-inc.com
or
Rebecca Maas, 212-931-6126
rmaas@peppercom.com
or
Freedom Communications
Eric Morgan, 949-253-2346
emorgan@freedom.com
or
North Jersey Media Group
Linda Iceland, 973-569-7673
iceland@northjersey.com
or
The San Diego Union-Tribune
Drew Schlosberg, 619-293-2165
drew.schlosberg@uniontrib.com
