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New Century Network plans to launch network gateway services
New Century Network, (NCN) the online newspaperowned consortium which began last year, plans to launch
its national network gateway services in May, to be
followed later this summer by a number of beta test Web
sites focusing on various vertical content areas, such as
entertainment, sports and the automotive industry.
NCN is owned by nine newspapers which include the
Advance Publications, Cox Newspapers, Gannett, Hearst,
Knight-Ridder, the New York Times, the Tribune Company, and the Washington Post, whose combined circulation equals half of all dailies published in the United States.
In addition, NCN now has 78 affiliates in its network.
Its first standardized rate card has just been unveiled for
national advertisers. It features ad packages that cut across
geographic and demographic demarcations and can be
segmented by content, browser type or both. Also to be
announced in the near future are agreements between NCN
and its 78 local newspaper affiliates, whereby the affiliate
sites agree to standardize their ad banner sizes networkwide and permit NCN to deliver advertising to their local
sites from centralized servers.
The new NCN gateway site, which is still unnamed, will
be promoted nationally on the Web through a mix of search
engines and directories, etc., as well as in print. In addition
to material from its affiliate sites, the new national service
may feature some third-party syndicated material, such as
national weather data and graphics and a sports score
ticker, but no content arrangements have been put into final
form.
Lee deBoer, chief executive officer of NCN, said NCN
will look to add a limited amount of third-party content
which it licenses or acquires from others. Although no
deals have been signed, deBoer hopes that NCN will be
able to integrate and/or cross-promote content from its
owner-managed Web wares that currently are not part of
the current NCN vertically-oriented Web site venture.
Prime candidates being considered to contribute to NCN’s
new sites include the Times Mirror’s Hollywood Online
and Cox Communications FastBall baseball news service.
While the advertising slots to be sold for the vertical
content Web sites will be primarily directed to national
advertisers, slots and inventory will be set aside for local
advertising sales, as well.
Also in preparation is the eventual rollout of an ad
service for centralized classified so-called super-Web sites
that are topic specific and will feature advertising obtained
from NCN affiliates which will be housed under one
cyberspace umbrella. Among the first categories expected
to be listed for the supersite will be apartment and
automotive rental listings.
Thus far, NCN has already delivered national advertising to more than one-third of its affiliates. Included among
the advertisers using the NCN network are American
Express, Ameritech, IBM, Ziff-Davis and others.
Yahoo launches free nationwide classified advertising service
Yahoo recently announced the launching of a free
national classified advertising service. Yahoo, the Internet’s leading search engine, is offering its service in almost
every major city in the United States.
The classified ad categories in the Yahoo listings
include employment opportunities and resumes of job
seekers, real estate offerings, autos and motorcycles,
general merchandise, tickets to local events, business
opportunities, personals, housing rentals, and announcements of birth, weddings, etc. The posting of classified ads
on the Yahoo Web site is free. Their objective is to generate
additional traffic on their site and offer advertisers the
opportunity to purchase targeted ads. In addition to the ads
being submitted by users, Yahoo also has joined with
several companies to provide national listings in the areas
of real estate, employment, automobiles and housing
rentals and plans to offer international classified ads.
Yahoo’s move into classified ads is going against not
only newspapers, but such formidable competitors as
America Online, Microsoft, several of the regional Bell
Telephone operating companies and cable TV systems who
have either announced plans to enter the classified market
or are seriously examining it for the future.
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A spokesperson for New York-based market research
company, Jupiter Communications, said that classified ads
are “a truly tailor-made application for the Net” because of
the simplicity with which ads can be searched, access to the
inexpensive national distribution of the Internet, and the
ease with which ads can be altered.
Some newspaper industry experts question whether
classified advertising services offered by Yahoo or others
is a credible threat. They cite the local newspaper brand,
for which newspapers have almost 100 percent loyalty.
Also, newspapers are not just rolling over – they have
launched their own Net-based local classified services plus
national services like CareerPath. However, others see that
Net-based firms or phone companies and cable TV systems
are, or soon will be, offering consumers an attractive array
of interactive services. They note that these companies
don’t have to capture a major portion of a given market’s
classified ads to be successful, because their operating
costs on the Net are low. Thus, if they merely pick up a five
or 10 percent market share, that could have a serious
impact on a given daily’s bottom line, since the lion’s share
of a newspaper’s advertising revenue is now derived from
classified advertising.
–Jules Tewlow
newspaper techniques
April 1997