Newspaper publishers discussing online ad network

The talks are about establishing a network to make it easier for national advertisers to buy space across a variety of newspaper Web sites, something that would allow them to recoup the ad dollars that their print editions have been steadily losing, the sources said.

Gannett and Tribune are talking with privately held Cox Newspapers, Hearst, and MediaNews Group, the sources said.

Cox Digital Media Vice President Leon Levitt characterized his company's involvement in the talks as preliminary. Being part of a network with Gannett and Tribune, he said, would complement the company's existing arrangement with Yahoo.

"We are thrilled with our Yahoo partnership," he said. "We think this provides us just another way."

MediaNews could not be reached for comment, while the other companies declined comment.

The Yahoo newspaper consortium comprises 19 publishers representing about 400 daily newspapers.

Under the terms of that deal, which also includes a number of other aspects, Yahoo is the exclusive provider of technology to serve graphical display ads on the newspapers' Web sites.

But a network purely between newspapers would allow advertisers to buy space across each other's sites, Levitt said, whereas the Yahoo group entails selling ads on Yahoo's partner sites as well.

Having a common technology would make it easier for businesses to buy ads across a swath of papers with confidence that they will reach the audience they want because publishers are not using multiple ad platforms.

Gannett and Tribune have said before that they are developing an ad network but have not said which publishers they were courting.

They so far have avoided the Yahoo group because of concerns over how it would be governed, and questions about the effectiveness of Yahoo's technology.

Gannett and Tribune are expected to brief Yahoo group members about their ad network plans at a regularly scheduled consortium meeting in Dallas next week, the sources said.

Some executives whose companies are Yahoo members said they were dismayed that Cox, Hearst, and MediaNews were talking with Gannett and Tribune. The news first appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday.

"My reaction to it was just disappointment at the timing because we do want to talk, all of us together, about options that would be more inclusive and not potentially divisive," said one member of the group, who declined to be identified because he is not authorized to speak for his company.

The source added that the consortium and Gannett and Tribune still could find ways to collaborate that could lead to more unified approaches to attracting advertising dollars, especially with more unified ad technology systems.

"Now there's two, whereas before, there literally were 42," the source said. "I would say from a national advertising perspective, that it's an enormous step forward."