For those of you looking for that niche that applies to your generalist newspaper or magazine verticals, a recent report from Scarborough Research may have all the answers.

According to Scarborough Research, Internet coupons are of increasing interest to consumers, but newspapers still lead the charge, with 53 percent of households getting their coupons from the Sunday newspaper.

So, if you haven’t stepped up your acquisition of online coupons from your local merchants, you may want to look into doing so.

written by Beverly Crandon

Roost, a real estate listing search engine, has recently released a new and improved set of features designed to set them apart from the rest.

The bundle of new and improved functions are a part of something Roost is calling Social Notes. It allows users to share Web pages through email, social networks, blog posts, and general Web page embeds. Moreover, once a listing is shared, the recipient of a note can reply through a comment link, thus enabling a ‘pseudo’ chat feature.

With the plethora of real estate listing sites that exist today and with Realtor groups and real estate agents growing a liking to their own Web listing sites, any new real estate search engine has got to come up with features that are unique and beneficial to both the Realtor and the home buyer. A “me too” product just won’t do and Roost.com seems to understand that.

written by Beverly Crandon

The Journal Register Co. has struck a deal (a Forbearance Agreement) to delay interest payments to several banks until the end of October. The JRC has also d-listed its stock (JRCO.PK) as it stands at a rate of four cents per share.

The Journal Register Co. publishes 22 daily newspaper and 300 non-dailies with a concentration in 6 geographic areas: Greater Philadelphia; Michigan; Connecticut; Greater Cleveland; and the Capital-Saratoga and Mid-Hudson regions of New York.

The Journal Register Co. is currently carrying $640 million of debt, which compared to the $463.2 million it made in 2007 seems daunting. What will make rising out of debt even more difficult for JRC is that through the Forbearance Agreement, it cannot gain funding elsewhere to get them out of this bind.

Being so far under the desired revenue goal it is hard to say if the Journal Register Co. will make it.

written by Beverly Crandon

Gannett is taking its relationship with video company Mogulus one-step further and has decided to partially finance the start-up. Mogulus has received 2.7 million in financing to date and now Gannett’s 10 million dollar investment will give the start-up the flexibility it needs, to compete in the ever crowded world of video vendors.

Mogulus and Gannett have already had a relationship spanning the past three months, but Gannett’s announcement of funding for the start up further ferments the relationship and in my mind could very well lead to an acquisition. It is important to note that up until this point, Gannett has termed the relationship as one formed out of a product need only, but I strongly question the truth of that. “Now, with Mogulus, all our journalists–including print and Web reporters–can deliver live, multi-camera broadcasts of news events to our customers,” said Craig A. Dubow, chairman, president and CEO of Gannett, in a statement.

Mogulus provides a browser-based Studio application to create LIVE, scheduled and on-demand internet television to broadcast anywhere on the web, through a single player widget. Their service comes in two types Free (ad-supported) and Pro (white-label, no-ads, pay for usage). To date Mogulus has gained 100,000 users and more than 3,000,000 unique viewers.

written by Beverly Crandon

For its 75^th anniversary, Esquire Magazine is planning to feature an electronic cover that will flash the phrase “The 21^st Century Begins Now”. The flashy (literally) cover will be powered by a tiny battery, invented especially for the Esquire Magazine anniversary edition. Only 100,000 of the 720,000 anniversary issued magazines will come with the special cover. David Granger, Esquire’s Editor-In-Chief said, “I hope it will be in the Smithsonian”.

written by Beverly Crandon

LinkedIn and the New York Times have just announced a content partnership that will provide LinkedIn users with targeted news and advertising. This announcement follows a list of new media ventures that the Times has started to dabble in and the LinkedIn relationship couldn’t have come at a better time for the media giant, given the release of its second quarter results.

Moving forward, LinkedIn members reading an article in either the business or technology section of NYTimes.com will see a box featuring five stories selected for them, based on their LinkedIn profile. The online ads the user sees will also be targeted to their profile. Kay Luo, spokesperson for LinkedIn, said, “We felt that The New York Times is obviously a great brand and useful in delivering news to our people.”

written by Beverly Crandon

Gannett backed Captivate Networks announced that in addition to continuing to broadcast news in thousands of office tower elevators across North America, they too now would start to deliver video news clips online, via their own branded Internet news site.

Mike DiFranza, founder and President of Captivate Networks, states that this upcoming online video news venture will “take engagement to the next level…” DiFranza plans to give viewers a deeper scope of the 15-second news bits they see in elevators with this new platform.

In addition to the online news site, the company also alluded to the fact that they were working on a widget that would allow bloggers and publishers to import Captivates video based news to their own sites.

Captivate Networks was purchased by Gannett in 2004 and today the company delivers 54.5 million impressions per month and is in 23 of North Americas top designated market areas.

written by Beverly Crandon

Covering stories from blog.ad-ition.com and other relevant classified media news.

This episode’s covered news bits include coverage of two publishers potentially forming a workforce collaborative partnership, what the search giants are saying the economy has done to their advertising business, Gannett and ADTECH, automotive spending, and a review of the top auto, real estate and recruitment sites for the month of June.

 

 Standard Podcast [21:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

written by Beverly Crandon

By far, Career Builder has been one of the larger jobs sites doing their part to keep abreast to new functionality that proves to have a high engagement quotient. Whether it is niche sites or new applications for the iPhone, they have done their share to focus on their core audience - the job seeker. Knowing all of this, it was no surprise to see Career Builder at the top of Nielsen’s ‘Top 10 Online Education and Careers Destination’ chart.

In 2007, CareerBuilder.com generated $768 million in North America.

written by Beverly Crandon

Newspaper Web sites have been labeled the equalizer to combat falling circulation rates, but a recent report from the Readership Institute made it clear that in the grand scheme of things, newspaper sites and their penetration have not increased in some very important metric areas, since 2005.

Readership.org, supported by personnel from North Western Education, completed a survey of 3,072 individuals across 100 DMA’s (Designated Market Areas). The survey respondents were asked questions primarily relating to newspaper Web sites and their frequency of usage. The respondents ranged between heavy print newspaper readers, mild print newspaper readers, all the way through to those who have “never read a newspaper”.

When asked about their newspaper Web site visitation, only 21% of respondents said they had visited their local newspaper site, within the past 30 days, this opposed to 15% in 2003, when the Readership Institute first started to conduct this survey annually. The bad news for newspapers however, is that although the numbers of people gravitating to their Web sites have increased, the user engagement levels have not. They have remained the same since 2005. This metric is somewhat disappointing, given the changes to user expectations and general online functionality, even within the past two years much less three. It becomes apparent that for many local newspapers, knowing that they at least have a Web compliment is enough. The success of many pure play sites that dabble in the same type of advertising that the dailies do, should be proof enough that the readership profile, when online, has changed and will continue to change. It is not enough to remain content with just ensuring your print content appears online.

As we’ve stated before on this blog, publishers need to look at their Web property as an extension to their brand. An opportunity to attract a new audience and with that, new advertising dollars.

A full copy of the Readership Institute report could be downloaded here.

written by Beverly Crandon