Yahoo! Inc. said Monday it has formed a co-branding partnership with seven major newspaper corporations to use Yahoo! HotJobs to power more than 150 daily newspapers’ online career sections.
The new partnership means that advertisers who list a job in any of the consortium’s newspapers can now post their jobs on Yahoo! HotJobs and throughout the Yahoo! network. Those same advertisers can choose from contextual, streaming, and interactive media to engage candidates.
Members of the newly formed consortium include Belo Corp.; Cox Newspapers, Inc.; Hearst Newspapers; Journal Register Company; Lee Enterprises, Inc.; MediaNews Group; and The E.W. Scripps Company.
The affected newspapers spread across 38 states and include the San Francisco Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Houston Chronicle, Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and San Jose Mercury-News.
According to the company, Yahoo! plans to use its technology platform in the following ways:
- Advertising. The company will sell online advertising for the newspapers’ websites.
- Search. The company’s search function will be used on newspaper websites, such as Web search, downloads of the Yahoo! toolbar, and sponsored search.
- Local. The company will offer its local product offerings (i.e., maps, event listings) on the newspaper websites.
- Content. The company will use its network to distribute the newspapers’ content in areas such as search, news, and other content portals.
“We believe the local segment is largely untapped and provides significant opportunities to expand audience engagement and subsequently grow local advertising,” said Terry Semel, Yahoo!’s chairman and chief executive officer, in a statement released Monday.
“With our powerful reach, content, technology, local tools, and advertising capabilities, Yahoo! is uniquely positioned to seize these opportunities, especially as we continue to enhance our search monetization efforts and to extend our leadership position in graphical advertising,” he said.
According to Yahoo!, the U.S. online advertising segment is predicted to grow from an estimated $3.4 billion in 2006 to an estimated $12.4 billion by 2010.
Further, research firm The Kelsey Group says 35% of all online searches are local, with volume expected to increase from more than 20 billion searches in the next year to more than 30 billion searches by 2009.
Spending on both local search and online classified ads is expected to exceed $31 billion in 2010, nearly double the $15.7 billion spent last year, the firm notes.
The consortium says it continues to recruit other newspapers to join.
Financial terms were not disclosed.