Ad Network's Hyper-Local Focus and Targeting Give Niche Web Publishers the Sales Muscle of a National Media Company
PHOENIX, AZ (December 10, 2009) — Village Voice Media, publisher of 14 metro-area alt-weekly print publications and 20 online properties, today announced strong, steady growth in both revenue and advertisers for Voice Local Network. Voice Local Network is a local sales platform for national online sites and strong local online sites that fit into the nightlife, food, entertainment and lifestyle verticals. VLN helps these sites monetize their content by leveraging Village Voice Media’s local sales forces. The network serves as a powerful geographic targeting tool for sites that fit into similar content and demographic categories as Village Voice Media’s online and print properties.
Since launching in June, VLN’s revenues have doubled month-over-month, while the number of advertisers has more than quadrupled — more than 80 advertisers bought ads across the network in October. In addition to growth in both revenues and advertisers, Voice Local Network has brought in high CPM rates across the board, averaging $10 gross CPMs and higher.
Current Voice Local Network publisher partners include Curbed.com, Eater.com, Checkoutmyink.com, Urbanspoon and social recommendation engine LikeMe.Net and other sites that match up to the nightlife, food, entertainment and lifestyle categories Village Voice Media is known for.
“Voice Local Network is an entirely new way for advertisers, Web publishers and traditional media companies to think about how they segment and communicate with readers,” said Scott Tobias, Village Voice Media’s president and COO. “Rather than running away scared from online media, Village Voice Media is offering quality niche publishers the opportunity to partner with us and leverage the sales forces we’ve built up in virtually every major market over the past 40 years.”
“Voice Local Network opened up a brand new revenue stream for us by bringing in advertisers that we could have never reached due to the limits of our sales force, and they have allowed us to focus on what we do best — great content,” said Ethan Lowry, co-founder, Urbanspoon. “As a popular restaurant aggregator, it’s essential that we tap fully into our city-by-city reach, and Village Voice Media is an ideal partner for that.”
Village Voice Media’s several-hundred-person strong sales force is distributed throughout all of its 14 markets, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Houston, Denver, Seattle and Miami.
About Village Voice Media
Village Voice Media is a collection of 20 online properties and 14 alt-weekly newspapers in major metro areas across the U.S., including New York’s Village Voice, the Houston Press, Miami New Times, SF Weekly, LA Weekly and Denver’s Westword. 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 Contact:
Corey Lewis or Lindsey Zouein
LaunchSquad
Phone: (415) 625-8555
Email: vvm (at) launchsquad (dot) com
