PHOENIX, AZ — 06/29/09 — Village Voice Media, publisher of 15 alternative weekly papers in major metro areas throughout the U.S., today announced a partnership with Urbanspoon.com, a leading online local restaurant guide that aggregates restaurant reviews from across the Web. Using Voice Local Network, Village Voice Media’s recently launched online local ad network, Urbanspoon will now be able to monetize their content using Village Voice Media’s locally based sales forces.
Urbanspoon aligns with Village Voice Media’s core demographic and content categories, making it an ideal fit for the Voice Local Network. Urbanspoon currently reaches 4 million people throughout the U.S., Canada, the UK and Australia and has become one of the most successful iPhone applications, with more than 5 million downloads to date. The Voice Local Network will help to support and grow the monetization structure behind Urbanspoon’s thriving new content and media venture.
“We are focused on growing our user base and quality of content, and the Voice Local Network will help us develop a successful, long-term revenue model,” said Ethan Lowry, co-founder, Urbanspoon. “Just as we give diners the honest lowdown on local restaurants, the Voice Local Network allows us to serve high value ads to geotargeted, ultra-relevant readers.”
“Urbanspoon has nailed its content category, and as a result, has exponentially grown over the past few years. The Voice Local Network will help them bridge the gap between great content and sustainable monetization,” said Scott Tobias, COO and president, Village Voice Media. “Through our relationship with Urbanspoon, and with the Voice Local Network in general, we are shifting the new media needle toward profitability. We see a great match here in combining our fifty plus years of local business experience with one of the most popular Web and mobile applications out there.”
Along with Urbanspoon, the Voice Local Network also lists LikeMe.Net, Wolfgang’s Vault, Curbed.com, Eater.com, Racked.com and Checkoutmyink.com as partners. Through the Voice Local Network, sites with similar content verticals as Village Voice Media’s publications, including nightlife, food, entertainment and lifestyle sites that reach similar readers to Village Voice Media’s 18 to 34-year-old core demographic, are able to tap into Village Voice Media’s several-hundred-person strong sales force distributed throughout all of its 15 locations, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Houston, Denver, Seattle and Miami.
To learn more about the Voice Local Network, visit www.voicelocalnetwork.com.
About Village Voice Media
Village Voice Media is a collection of 15 weekly newspapers and daily websites, including New York’s Village Voice, the LA Weekly, Denver’s Westword and the Phoenix New Times. Online, in print, and on mobile devices, Village Voice Media’s properties combine music, food and events coverage with gritty, hard-hitting journalism to create the most powerful city guides in each market. While the focus of the brand is local, its free classifieds site, backpage.com, partnership with social recommendation engine LikeMe.Net and national sales force, Voice Media Group, allows it to extend its reach to a national level.
Press Contacts:
Corey Lewis or Lindsey Zouein
LaunchSquad
(415) 625-8555
vvm (at) launchsquad (dot) com
