Visitors to McClatchy sites will get deals from Groupon that aren’t even available at Groupon.com. These will initially launch in Sacramento and Kansas City, with other regions following over the coming months.

In a joint release, the two companies explain their motivation:

For McClatchy, the agreement provides a key component in a local marketplace initiative designed to bring together consumers looking for bargains with merchants seeking to increase their sales.

For Groupon the agreement is part of a larger initiative to offer a new, incremental revenue stream to major publishers. According to Sean Smyth, Groupon’s VP of Business Development, Groupon enables publishers to seize consumer interest and generate buzz in their local markets by presenting readers with high-value, unique local market experiences.

"Groupon has pioneered and perfected the daily deal structure in markets of all sizes across the globe,” said Sean Smyth, Groupon’s VP of Business Development. "As leaders and innovators in the space we continue to ask ourselves what’s next. Providing merchants with major alternative channels to run deals is vital. McClatchy is an ideal partnership that blends our respective strengths to provide consumers with unbeatable savings on great experiences in their local markets."

Groupon says it has saved its subscribers over $285 million so far. This deal could give that number a big boost.

WebVisible says its platform will give McClatchy’s local advertisers a better way to get found in newspaper listings, newspaper websites, search engines, or via mobile phones or navigation devices.

The McClatchy Company has been testing the platform with local businesses in several markets, including Kansas City, Mo., Tacoma, Wash., and Fresno, Calif. Advertising sales in those markets in March were five times higher than the previous month. McClatchy and WebVisible are planning to add new markets every month through the end of the year.

Consumers use at least seven different media sources when looking for a local product or service, according to a study from BIA/Kelsey and ConStat.

"If a local advertiser’s marketing doesn’t make it visible in every one of those searches, the business is losing potential customers," said Kirsten Mangers, CEO of WebVisible.  "Online marketing is more than just showing up in search engine results, and McClatchy understands that its advertisers want a full solution that gives them visibility across the board. 

"McClatchy has always been a forward-thinking partner for local advertisers, helping them grow their businesses by making sure they can be found where customers are looking."

McClatchy is the third largest newspaper company in the United States, with 30 daily newspapers and 43 non-dailies along with local websites in each of its markets. McClatchy-owned newspapers include "The Miami Herald," "The Sacramento Bee," and the "Lexington Herald-Leader."
 

In this instance, perhaps if you had an EVP recorder in the room, you would have heard these names whispered up the nape of your neck: craigslist (or maybe, craig’s stupid list!); Monster.com; Google.

Total net loss in 2007: $1.27 billion. Advertising revenues were down 8.6%; circulation revenue was down around 5%. In the fourth quarter 2007, the biggest losses came from print classifieds, which declined by 20%, automotive, down 13.3%, employment falling 24%, and real estate crashing by 30.9%.

Lots of reasons are listed for the trouble: higher cost of circulation; operating expenses; a deeply discounted fire-sale of the Minneapolis Star Tribune; the selling off of eight Knight Ridder newspapers; a bad call on investing in newsprint and, specifically, the Seattle Times Company.

(FYI, says the voice on the EVP recorder, there’s a lot of internet companies in Seattle.)

And the biggest, meanest, gnarliest culprit: the Economy, and the housing bubble that popped over its head.

"The economic downturn led by real estate continued to impact our advertising revenues in the fourth quarter," said Gary Pruitt, McClatchy chairman and CEO. "California and Florida have been particularly hurt by the real estate downturn, so even though they represent only about a third of our total revenues they account for a majority of our advertising revenue declines."

"These two regions accounted for 58% of the decline in advertising revenues in the fourth quarter, and on a pro forma basis accounted for 67% of the revenue loss for all of 2007, clearly pointing to the cyclical factors impacting our business throughout 2007. In fact, advertising revenue in our other regions declined only 4.5% in 2007 compared to a 15.3% decline in California and Florida."

Pruitt believes that once the economy rights itself, all should return to normal as the company focuses on reducing costs and expanding in the right direction.

"Recessions by definition are followed by economic expansions, and we are working hard to position the company to benefit from a stronger economy once it turns."

(Hey, he said ‘recession.’ I thought we weren’t supposed to use the R-word. Didn’t he read The Secret?)

Though the c-word, the M-word, or the G-word weren’t mentioned in the earnings report, McClatchy said last year’s losses in no way reflected the long-term health of the newspaper industry, and that there would be a greater emphasis of expanding online revenue.

"We continue to produce strong cash flows and are quickly moving to become a successful hybrid print and online media company," said Pruitt. "We are focused on four major areas: driving new revenues, with a particular emphasis on online advertising; focusing on growing total audience; providing high quality public service journalism; and reducing our cost structure."

Hmmm. Expanding online presence and reducing costs. Where have we heard that before? Oh, yeah.
 

Newspapers Sniping Over CareerBuilder

Online job classifieds at McClatchy’s existing newspapers have performed well in 2007. But the Knight Ridder papers it acquired, which use CareerBuilder as their employment presence on the Internet, have seen their job revenue drop 14.4 percent.

Classified Intelligence reported the awful truth McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt discussed at a recent Newspaper Association of America event. “We would prefer to stay with CareerBuilder … but we have to consider all options, which would include selling our share,” Pruitt said at the NAA’s Mid-Year Review.

At one point, Knight Ridder owned a third of CareerBuilder, as did Gannett and Tribune. When McClatchy bought Knight Ridder, the papers renegotiated the ownership. McClatchy ended up with 15 percent, a figure that has reduced its revenue opportunity, according to McClatchy VP of interactive media, Christian Hendricks.

Classified Intelligence indicated that neither CareerBuilder nor Gannett are too concerned about McClatchy crying foul now. CareerBuilder’s CEO said his firm would be successful “whether McClatchy’s in or McClatchy’s out.”

Gannett CFO Gracia Moore told Dow Jones that Pruitt “knew what the deal was when he signed up for it.” If comments were music, Moore’s statement would be a very tiny violin playing for Pruitt, it seems.

First up, Yahoo and IBM have enhanced their joint enterprise search solution, to better compete with Google’s Enterprise Mini.

The new IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition has an easier, customizable interface and improved meta data support, making it easier to index content and provide better search results.

One feature that didn’t make it to this upgrade was a tighter integration of the Yahoo Web search engine with the product, something IBM and Yahoo tested but decided to hold off on including because not many customers have requested it…

Next up, Yahoo and newspaper publisher McClatchy Co., have expanded their advertising relationship. The deal sees Yahoo creating a newspaper advertising channel that will allow McClatchy to get better ad rates by offering advertising to a broad selection of sites, rather than individual newspapers.

The partnership now spans 264 newspapers in 44 states, using Yahoo’s technology for graphical advertising across their related Internet sites. The agreement also integrates Yahoo’s paid search technology on the Web sites, which together cite more than 50 million users on a monthly basis.

Comments

Tag:

The McClatchy Company is the latest newspaper publisher to sign on with the consortium. The group now includes 264 papers in 44 states, along with numerous distribution channels that benefit advertisers, readers and companies that participate.

"This ground-breaking partnership creates the newspaper industry’s first full-fledged integrated online advertising network and significantly expands consortium members’ Internet presence," said Robert W. Decherd, chairman and chief executive officer of Belo Corp.

"The consortium continues to gain momentum and will play a central role in the emerging media landscape."

The partnership is focused on 4 areas. Increasing newspaper online advertising revenue using Yahoo’s graphical advertising technology, using local and national online sales forces, integrating Yahoo’s paid search across newspaper sites and distributing quality newspaper content on the Yahoo network.

In a call, Sue Decker, Yahoo’s head of Advertiser and Publisher Group, and acting chief financial officer, said that the partnership with the 12 newspapers was complimentary. She pointed out that Yahoo has a large audience of users and reach. As an example she cites Yahoo mail with a quarter billion users.

 The newspapers in the consortium have a combined Sunday circulation of 18.5 million, while their Web sites have a total of 50 million monthly unique visitors.

"This milestone deal represents far more than an advantageous, win-win business deal for Yahoo! and participating newspapers — although it certainly is that," said Gary Pruitt, chairman, president and chief executive officer of McClatchy."

"The consortium also demonstrates that our members recognize this plan delivers significant benefits to our advertisers and readers, starting almost at once. We expect other newspaper companies will be joining in the near future, and they will be welcomed as allies whose participation will increase the benefits we can deliver," Pruitt said.

The Wall Street Journal reported how McClatchy will better-deal its fellow newspaper magnates and hook up with Yahoo and a rival group of publishers instead. Hearst Corp is one of the Yahoo ad network participants, who already number a dozen participants.

Their network would place Yahoo’s search on newspaper websites, while news content will be displayed in relevant Yahoo channels. Ad revenue would be shared among all of the partners.

If it comes to fruition, the deal will be a big win for Yahoo. They have long lagged Google in contextual search performance, and only recently took steps to match Google’s formula for ad success. Gaining the support of media publishers for a broad ad network at a time when online advertising, especially local ads, are on the rise should bode well for Yahoo’s numbers.

Yahoo and McClatchy announced a deal in early April that will place McClatchy’s international coverage of events in Yahoo News. That content will be labeled ‘Trusted Voices’ and readers will see accompanying entries from regional blogs with those stories.

Global newsmaking places like the Middle East and China should be more complete in the eyes of Yahoo News readers with the expanded coverage Yahoo plans to offer.

Their deal with The McClatchy Company brings the professional knowledge of foreign correspondents to reside alongside regularly reported news. Regional blog reports from them will accompany select stories and deliver an in-person perspective to their stories.

When Trusted Voices debuts, one of their first efforts involves news coverage of stories in Iraq. An ‘Inside Iraq’ blog written by Baghdad-based McClatchy staffers from the area. They also expect contributions from other Middle East correspondents in Cairo, Jerusalem, and other places in the region.

When the new effort launches from Iraq and other places, it will represent something of a return to the past for Yahoo News. For a brief period, the site experimented with having blog content accompany stories from traditional news sources.

That project ended abruptly a year later in October 2006, without comment from Yahoo. Blogs that enjoyed some visibility on the heavily visited Yahoo News site have yet to see the company return that model to active use.

Yahoo has made use of correspondents itself, in an effort to add original content during former Yahoo executive Lloyd Braun’s tenure overseeing Yahoo’s media efforts. War correspondent Kevin Sites spent a year contributing to Yahoo’s Hot Zone, traveling the globe to various sites of conflict.

Little has been done with Hot Zone since then. The McClatchy deal looks like a way to recapture that type of commentary in a complementary format rather than as standalone reporting pieces.

In the wake of its purchase of Knight Ridder, McClatchy made another move by agreeing to a deal with WebVisible to capitalize on web-based advertising. Sales should begin later this year.

WebVisible’s “Geneva” software will act as an exchange between the sales force reselling local search advertising, and search engines like Google and Yahoo. Advertisers would buy contracts to place their ads in sponsored searches for a period as agreed upon by them and the reseller.

“The McClatchy Company is looking to take the complexity out of offering local search on a large, guaranteed scale to their customers,” said WebVisible’s Marketing VP, Christopher Tippie. “As an exchange, WebVisible is designed to do just that.”

Borrell Associates believes local sponsored search will be a $4 billion market itself by 2010. Overall spending on local online ads could reach $8.6 billion in total by that time.

Gordon Borrell said in September 2005 that Google and Yahoo accounted for 32 percent of the local online ad market.

Instead of fighting them, Mcclatchy appears to have decided to work with them through the WebVisible partnership.

—

Add to | DiggThis | Yahoo! My Web | PreFound.com

Bookmark WebProNews:

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.