Las Vegas — Given the hard times faced by the newspaper industry at this moment, it is not surprising that Yahoo Newspaper Consortium is adding to it existing 700 newspapers clone nationwide the Boston Globe and the St. Petersburg Times, as it convened a CEO summit meeting with newspaper executives in Las Vegas Monday.
The announcement was blared out Monday at the Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium CEO Summit, which is being held at the Newspapers Association of America’s MediaXchange Conference in Las Vegas.
Lately, there has been an mixed reaction over the past few weeks, as a number of members who expressed off the record a combination of hope and anxiety about the program, which has been the only ad vehicle providing strong online ad growth in the recent past.
Initially, there has been some fear about the departure of Sue Decker, who was the main energizing force behind the creation and development of the Newspaper Consortium. And there was also some apprehension about what sort of direction the program might take under new CEO Carol Bartz, who comes from a non-media executive background. However, in the past few weeks, members have been encouraged by Bartz’ plan to address the assembly and are most taking a wait-and-see attitude.
The St. Petersburg Times in Florida also announced that it was joining the consortium, a three-year-old partnership uses Yahoo’s search platform to sell online advertising for newspaper websites.
The Globe anticipates the partnership to help the paper expand its online market reach for advertisers in New England.
“We are very excited about the advertising potential of The Boston Globe and Yahoo! partnership,” Globe publisher Steve Ainsley said in a news release. “With the combination of Boston.com and Yahoo! advertisers will have unmatched access to Boston’s desirable-on-line audience, and will be able to reach three out of every four online users in this market.”
The summit, which co-exists with the Newspaper Association of America’s MediaXchange marketing and equipment conference, is the first since newspapers began rolling out Yahoo’s APT platform of behavioral targeting ad management to sell from their own and Yahoo’s ad inventory.
More than 120 newspapers are now using APT, Yahoo said Monday.
The company also said it has now made more than 200 million refers — that is, clicks or visits — to newspaper sites in the period from August 2007, when the ad cooperation began, and this January.
With the addition of the Globe and St. Pete Times, the consortium now has 793 newspaper members. The consortium launched in November 2006 with 167 members.