Major Newspaper Groups Form Joint Local Online Advertising Group

quadrantone.jpgFour leading US newspaper companies are to announce a new joint company today to sell targeted local online advertising on their respective sites.

The Tribune Company, the Gannett Company, the Hearst Corporation and The New York Times Company will jointly own quadrantONE, with a base in Chicago that will employ 17 people.

According to the NY Times, advertising space will be sold in papers including The Los Angeles Times, The Des Moines Register, The Houston Chronicle and The Boston Globe. However titles considered to be not local will not be included in the deal, including USA Today, The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune.

The new company is said to be focused on offering advertisers scale in ad buys, with the newspaper companies themselves maintaining control. The move comes as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all target online mainstream media news sites, and it would appear that in part the move is also a reaction to that, with Lincoln Millstein from Hearst Newspapers saying simply “We want to control our own destiny.”

The combined reach of quadrantONE’s partner sites will be 50 million unique visitors a month.