That question may be answered sooner than later following a flurry of partnerships between newspapers and Internet vendors.

One reason for the activity: newspapers’ print revenue and circulation figures continue to slide while online penetration shows vigorous signs of life.

Case in point: Newspaper Association of America figures that reported that newspapers collected $638 million in online ad revenues for the third quarter of 2006, a 23 percent boost.

What’s more, the group also reported that newspapers are attracting more affluent readers to their Web sites. A recent report by Scarborough Research examining the sites of five newspapers indicated that their readers were more likely than other Internet users to spend upwards of $1,000 each month online.

The rise in online readership and ad revenue has spurred some of new media’s biggest forces to secure partnerships with newspaper publishers.

“Industry analysts agree with us that the local advertising opportunity is tremendous,” said Hilary Schneider, senior vice president of Yahoo Marketplace, about the site’s alliance with eight major newspaper publishers.

The new partnership will make a big difference in the way companies advertise and the way they interact with consumers, she added.

“We believe the local segment is largely untapped and provides significant opportunities to expand audience engagement and grow local advertising.”

During the teleconference announcing the partnership, Schneider hailed the projected growth of online advertising, citing one Bank of America study predicting the U.S. online advertising market to more than triple to $12.4 billion by 2010.

Leading positions

“This partnership advances Yahoo’s strategy of securing leading positions where we see the biggest prospects for growth,” she said. “As we all know, both the print and online versions newspapers remain one of the consumer’s most trusted sources for local content and are the major force in the local media marketplace.”

The new partnership also includes plans to mesh Yahoo and newspaper features, such as newspapers displaying Yahoo maps while Yahoo carries newspaper-created content on its local sites.

Not everyone is as sanguine about the partnership’s future, however. Classified Intelligence, while generally lauding the deal, said papers have to wait and see if members will actually result in an increase in traffic once Yahoo begins incorporating a newspaper’s content on its own site.

Still, said Classified Intelligence principal and contributing editor John Zappe, the alliance represents a step forward from current advertising efforts. Newspapers will have the backing of Yahoo’s sales force and its IT infrastructure will manage both national and local ad campaigns sold by newspaper staffers, he wrote.

“That moves well beyond what Real Cities now does, enabling an advertiser to buy the network or just parts of it or even just certain parts of a newspaper site,” Zappe said in an analyst’s note assessing the partnership.

But he also wrote that newspaper companies have ceded a part of their independence in exchange for some short-term gain.

“Now that might sound like a negative, but it is not intended as such,” he said. “Short-term gains, to the extent they can be converted into a long-term strategic opportunity, should not be denigrated.”

-Marcelo Duran

Yahoo one of many internet alliances

In the past few months, a number of high-profile Internet companies have teamed up with newspapers in an effort to help publishers tap into the online employment ad marketplace.

A rundown:

*Eight major publishers, consisting of more than 200 newspapers ranging from The Denver Post and St. Louis Post-Dispatch to The Dallas Morning News and Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in November teamed up with Yahoo Inc. to form an online network offering co-branded employment classified sites to readers.

The first phase of the partnership will provide advertisers who list jobs in any of the consortium’s newspapers the capability to post their jobs on Yahoo HotJobs and throughout the Yahoo network.

Long-term plans include the ability to share content and Internet features between Yahoo and consortium newspaper members.

*Monster made headway in the newspaper market last summer when the recruitment company announced its joint venture with Philadelphia Media Holdings LLC, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, to launch a co-branded job site.

Following that partnership, more than 40 other newspapers have hopped on the Monster bandwagon, including the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, the Wilkes-Barre (Pa.) Times-Leader and papers owned by Freedom Communications Inc. and North Jersey Media Group.

*Employment Web site CareerBuilder.com, which is owned by Gannett Co. Inc., Tribune Publishing and McClatchy Co., recently finalized an agreement over the ownership of the site following McClatchy’s acquisition of Knight Ridder.

Under terms of the revised pact, Gannett and Tribune each increased its equity stake in CareerBuilder to 42.5 percent while McClatchy retained a 15 percent share. Gannett and Tribune paid McClatchy more than $300 million as part of the transaction.

Twenty of the newspapers McClatchy acquired from Knight Ridder were already affiliated with CareerBuilder. Twelve other McClatchy newspapers, including The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee and (Minneapolis) Star Tribune, will now become part of the job site, bringing to more than 150 the number of papers now part of CareerBuilder.com.

*The PAGE Co-op entered the fray by taking an equity ownership in a new employment classified ad company, The Job Network LLC. Other partners in the network are TownNews.com and Redmatch North America.

TownNews.com and Redmatch’s current joint venture, The Job Network, will be folded into the new The Job Network. PAGE members will be allowed to purchase equity shares of The Job Network LLC. The member-owned co-op serves more than 550 daily newspapers with a total circulation of more than 12 million.

*Google is conducting a three-month test between 100 of its current advertisers and more than 50 daily newspapers to allow businesses to buy ads in newspapers (see Newspapers & Technology, December 2006). While Google is not working with newspapers to sell online employments ads, the pilot project is aimed at attracting online advertisers and smaller marketers to the print medium.

-Marcelo Duran