Ballantine Communications Inc., the parent company of The Durango Herald, is joining a national consortium of media companies to increase the digital audience for its advertisers.
The Local Media Consortium, founded in 2006 as The Newspaper Consortium, is restructuring and expanding to pursue new deals with technology companies and service providers. Ballantine Communications is new to the group.
The consortium will help Ballantine Communications to sell to advertisers that want a larger number of website impressions – the number of times a site is viewed or accessed – than the company’s own websites can attract by themselves.
“We can actually now bring a lot more impressions through Yahoo and other properties to give a lot more depth and breadth,” said Ballantine Communications CEO Douglas Bennett.
The announcement is one of the first major moves by Bennett, who was hired in July. Bennett succeeded Richard Ballantine as publisher; Ballantine continues to serve as chairman of the company’s board.
Through the consortium, Bennett also expects to use advanced tools to increase the Herald’s video, graphics and advertising capabilities.
“We’re going to bring in technologies at a discount that we might not otherwise be able to,” he said.
In a previous executive position at Freedom Communications, Bennett brought the California-based media company into the consortium, which places ads on Yahoo and other platforms.
“It actually was a great asset to the business,” Bennett said.
The consortium brings together 31 media companies that own more than 700 daily newspapers, along with major-market television and radio stations, cable outlets and affiliated digital properties.
Ballantine Communications owns four Southwest Colorado newspapers, The Durango Herald, Cortez Journal, Dolores Star and Mancos Times, and their websites, along with Directory Plus.
Other Local Media Consortium Members include A.H. Belo Corp.; Cox Media Group, Hearst Communications, Lee Enterprises and many others. Some of their properties include The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, Miami Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News and St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The consortium is also working to interest national advertisers in buys across the network.
Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst with The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., said attracting national advertisers is an ongoing problem for local newspapers.
National advertisers often don’t bother making separate deals with smaller papers. Binding together many media companies helps combat that problem, Edmonds said.
“They may pick up some advertising if they’re part of that particular network,” he said.
The consortium’s move comes as ad revenue increasingly follows readers online and to mobile devices. Total newspaper revenue slid 2 percent in 2012 from a year earlier, according to the Newspaper Association of America. Advertising revenue fell by 6 percent.
Sharp growth in digital and mobile ad revenue helped to compensate, along with higher circulation revenue.
“We see this as the next step in the evolution, growth and perfection of our ability to digitally serve our audiences so we’re delighted to be part of the national Local Media Consortium,” John Paton, CEO of Digital First Media, said in a news release.
Digital First operates media outlets, including The Denver Post, in 18 states.
cslothower@durangoherald.com
