The San Francisco Bay Guardian’s Ryan Loiselle prevailed in a three-way battle that marked the final hours of the “Paris Getaway” AAN CAN sales contest that ended Friday.

Loiselle bested Tucson Weekly’s Marc Desilets and Independent Weekly’s Robby Robbins and captured the grand prize — a weeklong trip for two to Paris – – through the sale of several ad schedules to a single advertiser. “When the contest was brought to my attention, I had already been courting a long-term client on a national AAN CAN buy,” says Loiselle. “When the first 4-week order came through, I thought I should take this contest seriously.

“As the contest progressed, I thought about the difficult decision of who I was going to bring with me. That’s when I ‘knew’ I was going to win and that I was going to take a very close friend who has just recently survived a long-term illness.”

And because the Bay Guardian generated the most new AAN CAN revenue during the contest period — account exec Shaun Kunkler also sold new clients into the program — the paper’s sales manager, Jody Colley, also won a trip for two to Paris.

The 12-week competition, which included more than 20 participating newspapers, generated more than $85,000 in new AAN CAN business. “The contest was a HUGE success in my mind,” says Robbins, AAN’s classified advertising chair. ” All that new biz off of a $5K investment … Hell of a lot better risk than the stock market.”

AAN CAN revenue set a record in the three-month period that ended on Friday, with total sales that were 12.5 percent higher than the previous record months of May-July, 2001. Even more impressive, sales during the contest window exceeded last year’s August-October revenue by 62 percent.

A new AAN CAN contest kicked off on Monday, offering AAN members a chance to win a 42″ widescreen plasma TV. For more information about the new contest, click here or contact Roxanne Cooper at 202/822-1955 or rcooper@aan.org.