Hearst, three other media firms, join in online

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: Four media companies, including Hearst Corp, announced that they have launched an online sales venture to target large advertisers seeking national exposure.

Other investors in the organisation, which is called quadrantONE, are Tribune Co, Gannett Co and The New York Times Co. By combining the online audiences of the participating media companies, “large national advertisers can immediately access tens of millions of unique visitors in the country’s top markets,” Dana Hayes, quadrantONE’s interim CEO, said in a statement.

The network will offer customised online advertising campaigns on a highly competitive basis, said Hayes, who is also senior vice-president for sales for Tribune Interactive.

The network of Chicago-based quadrantONE will have a reach of nearly 50 million unique visitors each month, covering 27 of the top 30 markets, the company said.

Advertisers will have access to such markets as New York, Los Angeles, Houston, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and San Jose, California.

Lincoln Millstein, senior vice-president for digital media at Hearst Newspapers, said the alliance was created to help streamline the ad-buying process for advertisers.

Before it was created, a company seeking to buy a group of online ads from the participating news organisations had to contact each website individually.

The network is designed to create an easy and effective way for national and regional advertisers to buy premium newspaper websites. The network will also allow the participating media companies to better compete for ad dollars with national portals.

More than half of national online display advertising revenue goes to the top 10 portals, Millstein said.

Each participant will commit a percentage of its online advertising space—also known as inventory—to quadrantONE, which will have the freedom to sell to national advertisers, differentiating the alliance from other networks, Millstein said.

Ad rates will also be set by quadrantONE. “It really cuts out a lot of friction and inefficiencies,” Millstein said. He declined to reveal the amount of inventory being committed because the information is proprietary.

Other media companies are expected to join the network’s four founding members.

“We’re hoping we’ll have thousands of affiliates across the country,” Millstein said, adding that the alliance is open to all media websites, including TV networks.