While Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) executives are preparing to discuss the company’s partnership with Nokia (NYSE: NOK) at a Monday morning press conference, other parts of the organization are also looking to outside alliances to extend its reach into local advertising. In a conversation with paidContent, Lem Lloyd, Yahoo’s VP of channel sales, said the company would be working with direct marketer Valassis on attracting local telcos to the online ad space, as these companies still tend to focus on affiliate TV stations and direct mail.
Yahoo’s targeting of telcos comes after a few months of aiming its local ad services at fast food franchises (in a sign of Yahoo’s attempts to woo these companies, it uses the preferred marketing jargon of “quick serve restaurants.”)
“All media companies are putting a focus on local ad spend, which still remains largely untapped,” Lloyd said. “Local represents half of all the $250 billion marketing spend in the U.S., but only a fraction is online. There are a lot of reasons these companies aren’t spending online. For one thing, many local ad buys are bought on a regional basis, as opposed to the more audience-targeted online ad sales structure. But mostly, it’s because companies haven’t put the time in to talk to all the various franchisee groups.”
As it seeks to reach out local marketers, Yahoo is partnering with companies like Valassis, which provides direct mail services to many telco companies. Yahoo believes it will open the door to moving more of that money online.
The partnership with a direct mail company also represents an evolution of the model behind the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium. As newspapers opened a lot of doors to Yahoo across local ad markets, the same is true of direct mail providers like Valassis. Also, in much the same way that Yahoo has provided ad sales training to newspapers through the Consortium, the company will also work with direct marketers to expand the digital possibilities there as well.
While Yahoo is looking to do more partnerships, it also has been cutting some ties to others. Over the past few months, Yahoo has parted ways with a handful of newspapers in the 800-member Consortium, as some members haven’t responded well to the company’s ad sales guidance.
Lloyd declined to discuss the specific issues there, or identify which members have left the fold, saying it was less than a dozen papers among hundreds. “We’re very selective on who we work with on a reseller basis,” he said. “One of our strategies is to have relationships that allow us to better go after specific industries. We simply want to focus on partners who put the same commitment into local ad sales as we do. It would be easy sign reseller agreements and brag about the numbers of partners. But we’re interested in quality, not quantity when it comes to who we work with.”
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