Alliance Strengthens Community Newspaper Campaign Outreach for
Local, Regional & National Advertisers
Norwalk, CT. –June 22, 2009 -Mediaspace Solutions, a multi-market newspaper and online advertising services provider, today announced that is has partnered with Kaesu, the leading provider of digital ad solutions for community newspapers and their local advertisers. With this strategic investment, Kaesu will launch its CoolerAds Business Tools to help local businesses manage their print and online ad campaigns, while Mediaspace Solutions will gain access to Kaesu’s newspaper partners’ print and online inventory for its national clients.
Kaesu’s CoolerAds platform already enables hundreds of community newspaper publishers to improve the efficiency and productivity of their media operations with features such as the patent pending display ad archiving system, online proofs, electronic tear sheets and email communication tools. More importantly, publishers can also provide a valuable suite of solutions to local advertisers, thus generating additional recurring revenue streams from the growing online advertising trend. The new suite of tools gives local business owners access to a range of online advertising features from managing a complete business profile page to the ability to publish an unlimited amount of content such as online coupons, products, services, videos and web sites. Kaesu’s platform enables community publishers to become the marketing hub for their local advertisers providing print, online, e-mail, and local search capabilities.
“We are very pleased with the investment Mediaspace Solutions has made in Kaesu,” said Peter Previte, CEO and President, Kaesu. “This partnership will strengthen Kaesu’s offerings by providing leading-edge online advertising and revenue generating solutions to community papers and their local advertisers for years to come,” added Previte.
“While Kaesu’s CoolerAds advertising technology is a major advantage for local advertisers, this partnership is equally beneficial for clients of Mediaspace Solutions,” said Scot Kerr, President, Mediaspace Solutions. “As more national advertisers continue to focus their campaigns on hyper local audiences, Mediaspace will have proprietary access to an online inventory of community newspaper websites. National advertisers will benefit from the breadth of reach a newspaper ad campaign provides with community newspapers as part of the equation,” said Kerr.
The free community newspaper industry is an expanding sector valued at an estimated $4 billion. The Association of Free Community Papers (AFCP) states that the total circulation of free newspapers nationwide is in excess of 100 million copies on a weekly basis, far surpassing paid paper circulation. Community periodicals include a diverse mix of publications, from traditional shopping guides distributed by carrier and mail, to alternative newsweeklies and community newspapers.
About Kaesu
Kaesu’s CoolerAds technology platform allows community newspapers to “lock in” print and online advertising relationships with local businesses, putting the paper in the enviable position of providing the most affordable and effective local advertising solutions to every local business. Kaesu’s business model looks at the bigger picture of “Local Search”, integrating content from local businesses as well as consumers, dramatically improving search engine optimization, advertiser exposure and the value of web sites. For more information, visit www.kaesu.com.
On June 5th, the Austin American-Statesman ran a full-page ad consisting of an open letter from the publisher Michael Vivio. It lays out - in some detail and with great candor - the situation in which the paper finds itself. And it details the ways in which the paper has responded.
Vivio contrasts the Statesman to others in the industry: the Statesman is profitable despite setbacks:
We made money this month. And last month. Next month, we will do it again. This is important because to be a free and strong journalistic voice in this community, we must be a functioning business.
And this, he says, is why the Statesman is for sale:
We will finish this year in the black — squarely in profitable territory. We are for sale because we are a valuable, profitable, lean and debt-free newspaper serving a dynamic market. By selling a profitable newspaper such as our own, our parent company will help achieve its strategic goals.
For every strain in the overall newspaper story - declining circ, high debt loads, aging readership - Vivio lays out additional, contrasting facts and/or the Statesman’s response strategy. Many of them involve re-packaging some content into niche, value-added products that command an additional payment from subscribers.
We applaud this direct, to-the-point approach. More newspapers should be taking this pro-active approach to communicate their value to the market. Yes, it means facing up to some unattractive facts. But it also provides the opportunity to showcase innovative ideas that can move newspapers to place of stability.
Will more newspapers follow the Statesman’s lead? We certainly hope so.
Newspapers’ continue to migration toward digital media is itself of great interest to trade journals, financial journals and even the good old daily newspapers. And journalist continue to rely on Mediaspace Solutions for our unique industry-wide perspective.
Ecommerce Times ran a story on the mid-May revamping of Google news pages amid the newspaper’s “revolt”, and asked Deborah Armstrong for the newspaper angle:
“There’s been an awful lot of saber rattling going on by newspapers that Google is in violation of something by linking to their content,” Deborah Armstrong, senior VP of sales and marketing at Mediaspace Solutions, told the Ecommerce Times. Adding new content might be part of a larger strategy to circumvent more legal challenges.
“I’m very optimistic,” said Scot Kerr, president of Mediaspace Solutions, which helps companies place newspaper ads. “I’ve always said, newspapers may be slow to react, but once they react, get out of the way. Once they adopt a new way of doing things, they become a steamroller.”
In its 14th year, Craigslist offers so much stuff on its site that it has become a virtual community, says Deborah Armstrong, senior vice president for sales and marketing at Mediaspace Solutions, an ad and marketing company.
“If I’m really needing to get rid of some debt or I need to lay my hands on some cash, I’m going online and asking other people what has worked for them, and that’s Craigslist,” Armstrong said.
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More Firms Enter Field
For a small employer looking to fill a job, a $25 posting on Craigslist may be better than using a job site such as Monster.com that might charge $475, Armstrong says. Of course, job sites like Monster are a different business than classifieds.
“If I want extra services that Monster provides, such as screening candidates, then I might be willing to pay for that,” Armstrong said. “But in this economy, many companies are trying to save money everywhere.”
Deborah Armstrong has become a popular source for newspaper industry journos. And now the digital press are calling, as well. This excerpt from an eCommerce Times article about Google’s loss of a key executive is really the very best part. Or so we believe.
“People like this are hard to replace, even in a recession,” Deborah Armstrong, senior VP of sales and marketing at Mediaspace Solutions, told the E-Commerce Times. Rosenblatt’s exit is a particularly tough blow because of his reputation and industry contacts, she said. “He did an amazing job running DoubleClick.”
Few outside of Rosenblatt’s inner circle likely know the complete circumstances behind his decision to leave — or, indeed, even whether the decision was entirely his.
“The spin is always on about these things,” Armstrong remarked, “but if I had to guess, I would say he had been frustrated about his opportunities there. He is probably looking for a company to run” — a leadership role that may not have been attainable at Google.
Randy Grunow, vice president of Mediaspace Solutions Direct, was quoted in a New York Times article about the Los Angeles Times’ front page advertisement created to look like a news story.
IN a move that raised questions about how far newspapers would go to please advertisers, The Los Angeles Times ran a front-page ad on Thursday that resembled a news column.
The ad, for the new NBC show “Southland,” was written and designed to look like a news article, chronicling the “Southland” protagonist’s patrol in Los Angeles. The promotion ran on the lower half of the paper’s left column, with the headline, “Southland’s Rookie Hero.” Forming an L, a horizontal ad for the show ran across the bottom of the page. The top of the column was labeled “Advertisement,” and included NBC’s peacock logo.
…
Newspapers “are doing all kinds of things to say, we want to be more valuable to the advertisers,” said Randy Grunow of Mediaspace Solutions, which buys newspaper ads.
Mediaspace Solutions president D. Scot Kerr was quoted at length in this article about branding in Credit Union Business, a trade publication serving the credit union industry. We won’t repost the whole article, just our favorite part:
The Media—and the Message
Messaging is different in B2B than B2C, agrees Scot Kerr, president of Mediaspace Solutions in Norwalk, Conn. That tendency holds true whether the media is print, broadcast or online. “Regardless of the environment in which their ad appears, they have to make sure the headlines and the copy and the images get to who they want to reach,” he says.
Successful B2B advertisers, says Kerr, “need to get that advertising message in front of the right people.” Kerr is a big proponent of newspaper advertising, particularly for the B2B market and even more particularly for credit unions.
Companies, in general, should watch where their competition is in terms of its advertising messages, and they should be there too, says Kerr. There are other types of vertical business publications that could also have value, he notes. He points our, however, that newspaper is highly utilized by the banking industry - not so much by credit unions. He references a report by TNS Media Intelligence he saw recently that indicated there are more than 5,000 financial institutions that have run ads in newspapers over the last two years. Based on a quick count, he says he found 26 credit unions on the list.
“Credit unions need to work to increase what we call the ’share of voice’ in their competitive area. That will be a huge opportunity for them,” says Kerr, particularly if they’re just beginning to advertise to the B2B market.
Banks that have been running the same ads for some time are likely experiencing rmder fatigue with their target prospects simply glossing over those ads, says Kerr. “If a credit union runs an ad, their ad is going to stand out and get attention because people aren’t used to seeing it,” he says. “We get used to the ads we see month after month and day after day, but when you come into a market with a new message, it’s going to get attention,” he points out.
In addition to print advertising, the opportunities in online communication are huge, says Kerr. “The percentage of people that are using the Internet while they’re at work is growing rapidly and that’s when they’re going to be more susceptible to business messages,” he says.
In late February, VP of Sales and Business Development Deborah Armstrong was interviewed on Fox News Radio about the recent changes in the newspaper industry. The clip is provided courtesy of Fox News Radio.
Mediaspace Solutions, a Norwalk-based multi-market newspaper and online advertising services provider, has found a new way to get its partner agencies and clients into the holiday spirit.
On Friday, the company mailed more than 250 boxes of non-perishable food items to its clients located in major cities across the nation.
Mediaspace Solutions also encouraged advertising professionals to gather additional food items and donate the boxes to food banks in their local markets.
“We hope that the delivery of a box of food to our advertising partners and clients in the nation’s most populated markets will rouse recipients to collect even more non-perishable food items to help residents in the cities and towns where they live,” said Scot Kerr, president of Mediaspace Solutions, which has about 40 employees in Norwalk.
Mediaspace streamlines the planning, purchase, placement and verification stages of national and regional media placement campaigns for agencies and advertisers.
“Cans of corn, green beans, dried cranberries and a bag of stuffing are simple ways our partners and advertisers can begin an effort to reach out to the local readership and donate to food banks during one of the most difficult economic times in our history.”
Kerr, who credited Deborah Armstrong, vice president of marketing for the campaign, said he would like to see advertisers initiate a food donation program and continue it throughout the year.
To make it easy for clients to find food banks in their regions, Mediaspace contacted newspapers for information.
They included the information, as well as several bags, in each box - which measures 768 cubic inches.
Some of the regions are: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.
The idea piqued the interest of Roberta Eichler, executive director of the Volunteer Center of Southwestern Fairfield County.
“What a great idea. This really gets your attention. It’s something you’re going to set aside,” she said.
Mediaspace’s clients do not know that they will be receiving the boxes, Kerr said.
“Like many businesses, we send (holiday) gifts to our clients. This year, it seems more appropriate to help them help others,” said Kerr.
As the economy declines, and layoffs occur, Kerr said it will be important to ensure that food banks are well-stocked throughout the year.
The effort is a good way to remind people of the increasing demand on food banks, said Kate Lombardo, executive director of the Food Bank of Lower Fairfield County, which provides food to about 80 agencies and programs.
“We’ve got to pull together. The need is up,” said Lombardo, who did not know that her food bank is included on Mediaspace’s list but welcomed the effort.
“We have a pantry where people line up at 7 a.m. for doors that open at 1 p.m.”
To Ensure Their Own Survival, Newspapers Are Happy to Partner With the Online Giants They Once Saw as Rivals
By Nat Ives
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — As the dignitaries and ad executives visited New York late last month for the U.N. General Assembly and the fifth annual Advertising Week, a less conspicuous group gathered at Hearst Tower on Eighth Avenue. They represented most of the 784 newspapers now collaborating with Yahoo, a competitor in other contexts, to sell ads and attract readers. It was their third meeting — and the first since Yahoo introduced a platform letting members sell ads across its sites as well as their own.
Unusual enthusiasm developed. “It was very clearly an upbeat meeting,” said George B. Irish, president of Hearst Newspapers, whose San Francisco Chronicle recently adopted the new platform, called Apt.
“It was excellent,” said Leon Levitt, VP-digital media at Cox Newspapers. The company plans to start using the platform at its Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Austin American-Statesman. Its business selling display-ads online will grow 20% to 25% this year, Mr. Levitt said, but going up on Apt should help double that rate next year. “We realize now it’s time for us to execute.”
New rules
Newspaper publishers have been working with digital media since the Clinton administration, but their efforts often bore the conflict one sees at car companies trying to get past petroleum. The old ways worked so well for so long; the new ways are difficult to master.
Today, newspapers that don’t figure it out will fail. They are sinking incredibly, faster and faster. The first half saw ad revenue drop 7.1% at local papers, 9.5% at national papers and 11% at Spanish-language papers, according to estimates from TNS Media Intelligence. That makes the declines of 2007 look like boom times, as local papers only gave up 5.7% in the first half, nationals lost 6.4% and Spanish-language slipped 4.4%.
Newspapers still collect more revenue than digital media. This year should see newspaper ad revenue drop 7.7% to $41.9 billion while internet and mobile ad revenue grows 20.9% to $26.6 billion, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers forecast. But you can see where revenue is heading. No one knows if or when online will help newspapers stop their overall declines; last year papers found just 7% of their revenue on the web, the Newspaper Association of America estimated.
Meanwhile the big publishers are taking body blows. Moody’s Investors Service warned on July 29 that it might downgrade its rating on The New York Times Co. debt, which is already one step above speculative grade. Then Tribune, Lee Enterprises and E.W. Scripps all reported declines in online ad revenue in the second quarter. Advance Publications said it would close or sell the Star-Ledger in New Jersey if drivers didn’t take pay cuts. The Star Tribune in Minneapolis skipped its quarterly interest payments to “conserve cash” for a restructuring that could include Chapter 11. Standard & Poor’s just put Gannett on credit watch, signaling a probable downgrade.
And the recent calamities on Wall Street don’t help anyone.
Rough terrain
Some publishers have also gotten tangled up trying to harness new media for themselves. Using the web to give readers a voice, for example, is a great idea, in theory. But papers from The Washington Post to the Chicago Tribune have resorted to temporary blackouts on commenting after vicious attacks piled up. The publisher of The Maui News just shut down reader comments permanently for “continual name-calling, crude language, profanity, slander, threats and racism.”
The good news is that papers are learning. When the Chicago Tribune created an avatar, “Colonel Tribune,” to promote articles through social media such as Digg and Twitter, the character initially “dugg” or “twittered” a lot of one-sentence headlines and links. The approach shared too much strategy with spam.
“I realized just pushing the stories was contrary to the spirit of social media,” said Daniel Honigman, the Tribune’s 24-year-old strategy coordinator for social media. “So then I started interacting on a one-to-one level. It kind of really established the persona of the Colonel as a man about town with a little bit of a sense of humor.” The social-media team says it now drives about 8% of the Tribune’s traffic.
Newspaper brands have simultaneously emerged as lighthouses online.
The New York Times leads the industry, with 11.6 million visitors in August, 47% more than in August 2007, according to ComScore Media Metrix. The combined sites of Tribune Co. newspapers attracted nearly 12.5 million people in August, up 34% from a year earlier.
Sharing gains
They aren’t Facebook, which drew almost 41 million people in August, up 21%. But they’re well-known, trusted and useful. Newspapers also have big local sales forces, which are increasingly catching up on the art of selling online ad space. All that is making newspapers appealing partners for the same companies that helped put them on the brink: the giants of new media. Newspapers, on the other hand, need to share new media’s gains.
Here’s one sign that promising partnerships are gelling: All 780 daily newspapers participating in Google’s Print Ads program, which lets advertisers bid on print space, renewed their contracts with Google earlier this year. “Not only did they all re-up, we’ve actually been adding inventory since,” said Spencer Spinnell, director of Google Print Ads. New papers are coming in, including Spanish-language, alternative weeklies and 70 college papers. “We’re starting with business and trade publications as well,” he added. “So the network is very healthy.”
Neither Google nor its newspaper partners will quantify the new ad revenue they say Print Ads generates. But Google continues to invest in the platform, most recently adding tools allowing marketers to search for inventory that reaches readers with particular demographic attributes.
Google has played a key role in luring advertisers from their traditional haunts to the web, but it has also become a bit of an evangelist on newsprint. “Despite what’s happening to circulation and readership, this is still a medium that connects with 50% of U.S. adults every day, and north of that on Sunday,” Mr. Spinnell said.
“Partnerships have to kind of have, at their core, respect for each other,” said Lem Lloyd, VP of the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium. The company has worked with many of the consortium’s papers for the past two years, cross-selling employment ads on HotJobs and in print. “Yahoo and some of the people now in leadership at Yahoo deeply, deeply respect these companies.”
Unlikely allies
You might think the McClatchy Co., which has felt a shift in fortunes this year sharp enough to prompt 2,250 job cuts, would resent the ascendant digital powers. Instead it has partnerships with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.
“Yahoo has loads of unsold inventory in local markets,” said Gary Pruitt, McClatchy’s chairman, president and CEO. “We’re able to sell into that under our partnership. They can sell advertising into our websites as well, using their national sales force.”
The Dallas Morning News, part of A.H. Belo, plans to start using Yahoo’s new platform before the end of the year, said Fran Wills, senior VP-interactive and classified sales. The Morning News has already realized new traffic and revenue through its partnership with Yahoo. It has teamed up elsewhere to help its clients improve their search-engine marketing.
“At this point in the game, most newspapers have embraced the internet and are devoting both dedicated and integrated resources to support it,” Ms. Wills said.
Other parties are emerging, or re-emerging. A Los Angeles start-up called the Rubicon Project promises to serve newspaper sites more-appropriate ads than the big ad networks. Mediaspace Solutions in Norwalk, Conn., uses the web to deliver verification and invoices for the campaigns it plans and buys online and in print, treading on Newspaper National Network turf. And the Associated Press has created a Digital Cooperative whose first product, the Mobile News Network, arrived in May. More than 500 papers have signed up for the AP’s online Member Marketplace, which lets them share articles, photos and graphics.
Taking sides
For its part, Yahoo’s consortium is making real converts of the papers in it. Last month the World Association of Newspapers, representing 77 newspaper groups, asked regulators to block a big partnership planned between Google and Yahoo. The companies’ cooperation would undermine newspapers’ online ad rates, the association said, and inflate the prices they pay for search ads.
Less than an hour after the global group’s complaint, however, the Newspaper Association of America declared neutrality. “The NAA board of directors has taken no position on the proposed advertising partnership between Google and Yahoo,” said the American CEO.
Cox Newspapers’ Mr. Levitt said his company doesn’t have a stand either — but he does. “Yahoo has been a great partner to us,” he said. “Our goal is for them to continue to be a viable company so that we can continue this partnership. If this helps that, that’s good.”
