Sunnyvale, California — The Yahoo Newspaper Consortium list has grown by another five new members. The new papers joining the advertising pool are: Freedom Communications’ California flagship, The Orange County Register of Santa Ana, Calif.; as well as The Gazette in Colorado Springs; the North Jersey Media Group’s The Record of Hackensack and Herald News of West Paterson; and The San Diego Union-Tribune.
The consortium came into existence in November 2006 with 176 newspapers, these new additions bring the consortium to 814 newspaper members, which according to Reuters accounts for 51% of all Sunday newspaper circulation.
It initially began by connecting the newspapers with Yahoo!’s HotJobs job search engine. The partnership has grown to include products like search and content.
E.W. Scripps , which promotes most newspapers has been struggling with online ad sales, has said that the consortium has contributed 30 percent to their online ad revenues in Q1, or roughly $800,000. Also, Cox Newspaper’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which, combined with Yahoo, cites comScore figures that indicate it has increased its online audience reach in its home city alone from 15 percent to 80 percent.
“The Yahoo alliance has been one of the few bright spots for newspapers during the past few months.” “A recent estimate by Ad Age found that the two-and-a-half year-old consortium sold $50 million in Yahoo ad inventory, with about ‘several million’ dollars in sales being added each week.”
“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.”
However, the report also noted that 592 newspapers in the consortium rely exclusively on Yahoo’s HotJobs for help-wanted ads, “an area that has been hit particularly hard as unemployment has approached 9 percent nationwide-many members have expressed some wariness about how this might affect the value of the consortium over time.”
Nevertheless, 350 newspapers have been the recipient of 23 million referrals per month as a result of the distribution of headlines across Yahoo! Sites.
In a day where newspapers are struggling to survive, partnerships like these can give a boon to their online business.