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Old media takes aim at Web goliaths

February 26, 2008 | Internet Marketing

Four large newspaper owners - Gannett, Hearst, New York Times, and the Tribune - are forming an online ad network called quadrantOne in hopes of competing with Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL.

Local newspapers have it hard when it comes to claiming a slice of the billions of ad dollars spent online. Big marketers that want to send a message to the masses are more likely to turn to big Web companies such as Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft, and the vast networks they’re tapped into. “What [national advertisers] have always done is seek the easiest solution - a couple of big portals - to give them national reach,” says Jack Williams, president of Gannett Digital Ventures, the online division of the Gannett newspaper chain.

But now, companies representing 174 small papers and other publications are banding together to make their task easier. Four of the nation’s largest newspaper owners, Gannett, Hearst, New York Times (NYT), and the Tribune, have formed an advertising consortium dedicated to attracting marketers that seek big audiences through local channels.

The hope is the combined advertising network, dubbed quadrantOne, will attract advertisers previously turned off by the daunting task of amassing audiences of millions by buying space individually on dozens of smaller Web sites. “Local publishers just don’t have the scale to compete with the big portals,” says Dana Hayes, quadrantOne’s interim CEO and Tribune Interactive’s senior vice-president of sales. “So what quadrantOne is really looking to do is to create a virtual portal.”

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