Topix 'Contextual News' Links

Newspaper-owned news aggregation site Topix, which has a number of third-party, local news distribution deals with the likes of AOL and Citysearch, among others, launched a very interesting offering recently. Unfortunately, I don't have a great deal of time right now to discuss it.

It basically pushes a bunch of contextually related news links to participating news sites that appear beside editorial content. Participating sites include The LA Times, The Chicago Tribune, The San Jose Mercury News (their parents' are owner-investors in Topix) and others.

In other words, readers who want to read more news about the same topic can click one of the links and be sent to the Topix site where there are many more stories on the same subject. Reportedly, the terms of these deals involve a revenue share (presumably if the user clicks on sponsored links on the Topix site). This is a very interesting twist on contextual advertising.

Here are some links (courtesy of Chris Tolles, Topix's VP of Sales and Marketing ) where you can see the content/contextual modules in action: Business, Sports, Home & Garden (scroll to the bottom) and Entertainment (scroll to the bottom).

Here's more complete coverage from ClickZ.