More Newspapers Join Yahoo Group

[Sunite]

More Newspapers Join Yahoo Group
By Seth Sutel
November 19, 2007 11:44AM

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Yahoo's newspaper consortium, while growing, still has several conspicuous absences, including Gannett and Tribune, the No. 1 and No. 2 newspaper publishers by circulation. Both companies say they are continuing to talk with various parties about cooperating in online advertising. The Washington Post Co. hasn't joined the Yahoo group either.

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   Yahoo Inc. has added 17 more newspapers to its group of online publishing partners, giving the group added heft as it approaches its one-year anniversary.

Yahoo executives told The Associated Press that The Columbus Dispatch and 16 regional newspapers owned by The New York Times Co. have joined the consortium, bringing its total number to about 415 dailies and another 140 weeklies. The New York Times itself, however, hasn't joined.

Lem Lloyd, who runs the consortium for Yahoo, said the partnership has already been bearing fruit both for newspaper publishers as well as Yahoo, but he declined to provide specific dollar figures.

The first goal was to integrate the online help-wanted classified advertising listing of newspapers with Yahoo's online job search database Relevant Products/Services HotJobs. Lloyd said that has been proceeding on schedule, with some 377 papers already launched and others on the way.

For newspapers, linking their online recruitment ads with HotJobs is seen as a way to hold on to more advertising dollars amid competition from Internet rivals like Craigslist.

Other newspapers have linked up with Monster Worldwide Inc. in online classified ads or are part of CareerBuilder, a joint venture owned by the three largest newspaper publishers, Gannett Co., Tribune Co. and McClatchy Co.

The Yahoo consortium has continued to sign up new members since its original launch last Nov. 20. It added the New York Daily News Nov. 9 and a group of 12 newspaper publishing companies in April.

Yahoo lets newspapers add job listings to its HotJobs database at a wholesale rate, while newspapers can charge higher prices to advertisers for help-wanted ads that they also upload to HotJobs.

Lloyd said Yahoo has seen a revenue bump in the tens of millions per year, but he said the effect has been varied among the various newspaper partners since they all charge different prices.

One of those partners, Cox Newspapers in Atlanta, says the partnership has "gone very well" to date, according to Leon Levitt, vice president of digital media the company, which is a unit of privately held Cox Enterprises Inc.

Levitt also declined to discuss specific revenue gains, but he said the Web sites of Cox's 17 newspapers have seen significant increases in traffic since signing up with Yahoo.

In Austin, Texas, for example, where Cox owns the Austin American-Statesman, its market share for online recruitment ads is now 40 percent, up 19 percentage points from a year ago. (continued...)

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