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local.yahoo.com
Yahoo Local: Seems like this might be a smart addition to the recent ad deal with newspaper chains. |
(UPDATE: I dug into this a bit further, and learned from Yahoo's release on the deal that local advertising is included after all. So this post may be somewhat moot, but I'll let it stand for the record. See note at the end.) The news broke a couple of days ago: a group of major newspaper publishers including Hearst Corp., MediaNews Group, and McClatchey have cut a broad advertising deal with Yahoo.
On April 13, the Wall Street Journal reported: "The network would establish a common online platform among a large group of newspaper Web sites that would allow an advertiser to easily purchase advertising space across multiple newspaper sites. ...The partners hope that creation of a national platform will give them an edge in attracting big advertisers such as car makers and phone companies that want to advertise to a nationwide online audience. Newspapers have struggled to attract such advertising in their print editions, and have been experiencing a steep decline in advertising revenue."
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Well, I wish them luck. I hope this helps keep those papers afloat in a fairly non-destructive way.
That said, it seems to me that (so far, at least) this deal contains a glaring omission: local advertising. Yahoo has a pretty strong online network for delivering local information and ads: Yahoo Local. Also, it seems to me that mainstream news organizations generally aren't doing nearly as much as they could be to present contextual local advertising online.
Close community ties and local coverage are still core strengths of most newspapers. Smart local advertising (not just classifieds, or display ads, but smart context-sensitive local ads) could both complement and amplify those strengths, as well as enhance the paper's brand. In fact, as I've mentioned before, this even has some print-side potential.
I sure hope the papers involved in this deal will start talking to Yahoo about local ads -- soon.
UPDATE DETAILS: Here's what Yahoo's Apr. 16 press release said about local advertising: "Leveraging leading local and national online sales forces. This
relationship creates an all-in-one buying opportunity for local
advertisers, allowing newspaper sales representatives to offer the
combined aggregated reach of local newspaper and local Yahoo! online
audiences. Yahoo!'s sales force may sell newspaper inventory to their
portfolio of national advertisers and newspapers' sales forces can sell
Yahoo!'s local online inventory to local advertisers."
...Hmmm, I'm not exactly sure what that means, selling inventory to local advertisers. Could someone take a stab at explaining this? It doesn't quite sound like running contextual ads from Yahoo Local on news sites, but maybe I'm missing something here...
(Hat tip to Jim Romenesko, and also to today's Denver Post All News Podcast)
