Notice How Newspapers And Web Classified Job Listing Sites Are Now Rushing Together To Form Partnerships. Better Late Than Never, But What About LiveDeal That Started It All In The First Place?

Companies such as Yahoo and Monster have struck deals recently with a multitude of US newspapers to go into partnership for job listings on a revenue share basis. The likes of HotJobs (Yahoo) and Monster already have very sophisticated online classifieds software that they continually upgrade, so why not take advantage of what they do best and let the newspapers do what they do best in attracting the job listings. It may well be the way for newspapers to reclaim that lost classified business that is going on the web, anyway, but not necessarily to their own web sites.

The only real question is why all of this didn’t happen earlier? It was back in 2005 that FTM first wrote about LiveDeal, a web classified site that first suggested that it and newspapers should team together. Torstar, the parent of Canada’s Toronto Star, liked the idea so much not only did it invest $3 million in the company but it also opened its own LiveDeal site in Canada.

ftm background

With Two Of Every Three Dollars Of Newspaper Online Earnings Coming From Classifieds, Why Isn’t The Industry Ready To Enter The “Golden Era of Online Classifieds”?
Globally about 6.8% of all newspaper classified revenues comes from online and the obvious question is why that number isn’t much larger especially since everyone knows classifieds have been migrating online for some years. Why haven’t newspaper’s online classified operations taken up the slack better than this?

LiveDeal Ties Up With AdStar – Now An Online Ad Can Be Automatically Fed to the Local Newspaper’s Print Edition
It seems a no-brainer – newspapers partner LiveDeal, a specialist in online classifieds, and let LiveDeal do all the site maintenance, keeping its technology up-to-date, and they share the revenue. The Toronto Star liked the idea so much it actually invested in LiveDeal and then set up its own Canadian site that has been very successful since its January start.

Can Newspapers Maintain Their 20% Plus margins in 2006 On Print Ad Revenue That Could Actually Decline By 1.5%? The Answer May Rest On The Advertising Opportunities Their Own Web Sites Provide.
If a publisher takes as a basic premise that the trends of past years will continue in 2006 – that print advertising growth will be less than 5% -- the bears say it will actually drop 1.5% and fear that is too optimistic -- and that Internet advertising will grow from 20-30%, is there any way to continue the usual 20% plus margins?

Now There Is A Way For Newspapers to Compete With Craigslist. Say Hello to LiveDeal
Newspapers know they stand to lose billions of dollars in classified advertising revenue to Craigslist, and many publishers have simply no idea how to compete against free ads. But now comes along LiveDeal, a Craigslist competitor that actually encourages newspapers to turn over their classifieds to a site LiveDeal will run for them on a revenue share basis. It’s aimed at local readership within a 50-mile radius of local postal codes, but it extends nationwide.

Wall Street Has Coined a New Term For the Advertising Difficulties Facing Traditional Media: Welcome to “Media Malaise”
With nearly all the traditional media advertising pointers for the rest of the year looking particularly sick, trust Wall Street to introduce the term that sums it all up. “Media Malaise” is forecast to be with us for some time to come!

LiveDeal has struck deals with a few American newspapers, but its real forte is pets and items for sale rather than jobs, and it is the lost job listings revenue that newspapers are most anxious to protect, hence the announcement by the New York Times Company this week of its deal with Monster.

LiveDeal’s idea was simple -- offer an online classified ad site searchable by postal codes. Punch in any of the 70,000 US zip codes and classifieds for a large variety of topics show up from a 50-mile radius. The search can be extended outwards to the whole country.

A newspaper reader could call the classified department wanting to sell a car. Besides appearing in the print edition that ad will also appear at no charge on the LiveDeal powered newspaper classified ad site. That means the ad shows online as well as in print, and since the online site can be accessed, locally, nationally or even internationally, the exposure is far greater.

While the additional online ad is free, the newspaper’s classified ad staff will try and sell enhanced features for its online placement -- for a few dollars more show the car’s picture; or how about placement at the top of the car sale category, etc. The important thing for newspapers is that there was a direct connection -- that call to its classified department.

LiveDeal struck an important deal last year with AdStar. When a LiveDeal customer posted an online ad there was the option of publishing the ad also within the print edition of the participating local newspaper by using the AdStar print ad placement platform. The print ad is created automatically using the information within the online classified ad, the software automatically formatting the ad for the selected newspaper, matching the LiveDeal category with the newspaper’s appropriate category, and submitting the finished ad to the newspaper’s publishing system for print and online publication.

So, being so far ahead in trying to forge relationships with newspapers one might think that LiveDeal founder Rajesh Navar might feel bitter that others are now stealing his thunder, but he takes the high road.

“LiveDeal was actually quite pleased to hear the news about Monster’s partnership strategy with The New York Times and other newspapers. These relationships confirm our approach that online and print partnerships can be a win, win proposition to all parties. What’s important to understand is that LiveDeal is complimentary to Monster’s and HotJobs’ solutions – their focus is on jobs and our focus is on pets, furniture, real estate, autos and merchandise.

“What we are seeing is that newspapers are comfortable working with more than one online player to ensure they can offer their readers a best of breed solution. We are in numerous late phase discussions right now with high profile media companies and we will be launching a partnership with a major US newspaper in the very near future where we compliment an online job verticals player,” he told FTM via email.

Navar founded LiveDeal.com in 2003. He was an original member of the engineering and management team at eBay and that probably explains why LiveDeal has an eBay look and feel about it.

Last November, Yahoo, via its HotJobs platform, struck a job listings deal with seven US newspaper chains -- MediaNews Group, Hearst, Belo, E. W. Scripps, the Journal Register Company, Lee Enterprises and Cox Enterprises. That means the participation of 176 newspapers including The San Francisco Chronicle (probably the hardest hit of any US newspaper losing classified ads to Craigslist), The Dallas Morning News, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Denver Post, with a combined daily circulation of 12 million.

In the just announced deal involving the New York Times Company new web sites will be introduced for each of its newspapers, branded with Monster. And, like the LiveDeal feature with AdStar, employers, via one click, can get their online ad printed in that newspaper, too.

Sharing at the Monster table that in the past has cost it millions of dollars of lost revenues – no doubt about it, a sign of The Times.

Notice How Newspapers And Web Classified Job Listing Sites Are Now Rushing Together To Form Partnerships. Better Late Than Never, But What About LiveDeal That Started It All In The First Place?

It was, perhaps, a bitter pill to swallow but newspaper companies have come to the realization that if you can’t beat the major web classified job-listings companies then you might as well literally join them.