Four major U.S. newspaper chains launched an online advertising network on
Friday that will let advertisers book national campaigns through a single point
of contact, reaching 50 million people a month across the U.S.

Investors include the Tribune, Gannett, Hearst and New York Times companies,
which publish flagship newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune, USA Today, the
San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times, respectively.

The network, QuadrantOne,
will let an advertiser place ads on hundreds of Web sites focused on 27 major
markets, targeting users by what they are viewing, their online behavior and
demographic information.

QuadrantOne is most notable for the online players that aren't participants,
such as Google, Yahoo or Microsoft. This latest move by the newspaper companies
may be designed to assert greater control over their print and Web properties.

Yahoo reached a landmark revenue-sharing deal in November 2006 with seven U.S.
publishers. Yahoo provides search services, places job ads on its own HotJobs
site and sells Web advertising. The deal was expanded in April 2007, with some
264 newspapers distributing their content on Yahoo's portal.

One of the QuadrantOne's investors, the Hearst company, is participating in
the Yahoo deal.

Google's PrintAds program lets its customers who are already buying contextual
Web-based ads to also place ads in 600 daily and weekly U.S. newspapers. Google
also offers easy tools for customers to design their own ad that can be uploaded
to particular newspaper.

The Chicago Tribune, the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle participate
in PrintAds.

If newspapers develop better ways to sell their own online ads, they may not
have to share revenue with their Web counterparts such as Yahoo and Google.

Online advertising accounted for about US$16.9 billion in revenue in 2006 and
is expected to rise to $50.3 billion by 2011, according to a December 2007 report
from the Yankee Group.

The U.S. newspaper industry is in dire straits, in part because of a bumpy
U.S. economy, declining print readers and falling print advertising revenue.

Critics argue that newspaper companies waited far too long to revamp their
businesses with the surge in online publishing and advertising over the last
15 years.

Companies such as Google, which has made a fortune in Web-based advertising,
have reaped some gains at the expense of newspapers, as advertisers look for
cheaper and more targeted ways to reach buyers.

Classified advertising, once a bread-and-butter source of revenue for newspaper,
has also declined over the years due to advertising boards such as Craig's List.

IDG News Service

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