Even as preprint circulars continue to account for a hefty chunk of newspaper revenues, the race to migrate these FSIs onto digital platforms that provide compelling shopping experiences and command premium CPMs is revving up. Associated Press will soon release iCircular for mobile devices, Gannett’s PointRoll operates ShopLocal, Local.com has a local option and several deal/offer aggregators are popping up. Travidia’s Find n Save, however, has gained early traction with publishers thanks in large part to a social + local + deals approach.

McClatchy is the earliest adopter, with co-branded Find n Save sites now live in 21 markets, including Charlotte, Miami and Sacramento. Find n Save leverages partnerships with Groupon (daily deals) and Milo (real-time retail inventory) and Twitter (Twitter streams) to create quick shopping routes for deal hunters.

Here are how the different tenets work together within the holistic platform:

– Group Buying: Groupon provides an exclusive daily deal in each of McClatchy’s markets through Find n Save. At NAA mediaXchange, VP of Strategic Development James Calloway said that this co-branded arrangement plays nicely with the separate deal-a-day program that the publisher is now independently marketing through a private label from Second Street.

Unsurprisingly, Calloway has seen the greatest successes in restaurant, recreation and personal grooming verticals. Retail (except for high-margin goods) are more suspect.

In addition to obvious brand and exclusivity perks, the Groupon Find n Save relationship integrates consistently across all McClatchy properties with “zero sales or fulfillment costs.” Effective CPMs have reached $125. The drawbacks: McClatchy controls the user relationship (and thus the data), but McClatchy handles the local merchant. Then there’s margin compression, with the publishers taking only 15 percent.

– Local Coupons: In addition to digital store circulars (listed as clickable tiles on a single page), Find n Save also features searchable local coupons by category and advertiser. Many are online-only, but print-to-online and online-to print also exist. All coupons are socially enabled for sharing, and local advertisers have unlimited coupon-refresh capability.

– Real-Time Inventory: A deal with Milo (now part of eBay) enables product searches primarily for national chains, though Calloway, much like Milo founder Jack Abraham, is hopeful that eventually more locals can participate. McClatchy takes a revenue share on clicks to retailer sites.

– Social Media Integration: Find n Save embeds a Twitter widget that streams active local deals, linking to the source. Shopping blogs from local newspaper columnists such as Sacramento’s “Shop Cheap” infuse useful content into the site. Calloway sees Find n Save’s shopping portal — an advertising vehicle — as primarily a “content play.” Social functionality enriches this ad-as-content value.

The post NAA mediaXchange: Local Shopping Apps, Part I — A Closer Look at Find n Save appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

At the time, McClatchy Interactive head Chris Hendricks saw it as a net plus for both companies. “They’ve got their space,” but McClatchy offered Groupon more “entry points” to readers and deals, he noted.

Tellingly, Hendricks also said the limited commitment was a net plus. “We have a lot of stuff going on,” said Hendricks. “An affiliate marketing program fits in better,” and “lets us get out of the gate.” Similar logic was apparently used by Media General and Tribune, which signed with Groupon around the same time.

Now, McClatchy appears to have found its sea legs in the deals space. While it will apparently maintain a relationship with Groupon, it has opted to invest heavily in the white-label route via Second Street Media‘s Deadline Deals platform, which now serves more than 150 publishers.

In a statement, Hendricks said –without commenting on the fate of its relationship with Groupon — that a private-label deals platform is a perfect fit with FindnSave, Travidia’s deals-and-offers portal that will eventually launch in 21 of McClatchy’s 28 markets. FindnSave pairs daily deals with other offers, such as weekly sales, coupons and grocery cents off offers.

McClatchy isn’t the only newspaper company with news in the deals space. Hearst Newspapers announced last week that it would join MediaNews Group and Freedom Interactive as partners of Analog Analytics, which says it now serves 850 local media properties. Freedom’s Orange County Register recently did more than $188,000 on one deal (a heavily discounted boat ride to Catalina Island).

Group Commerce Inc., similarly, recently announced a deals partnership with The New York Times Co., among other media companies.

The post Newspapers Going Private-Label Route for Deals appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The Sacramento area is fast becoming Ground Zero for local blog networks. McClatchy’s Sacramento Connect, a project carved from The Sacramento Bee, is a content connector for 70+ area blogs and Web sites. It started incubating last summer and was fully in place by March.

Connect, which is subtitled “best of the local Web,” can be personalized for personal tastes a la Fwix. It primarily offers blogs more visibility and traffic, but there is no payment plan. Connect is also doing some cross-publishing based on the aggregated content, starting with a recently published Happy Hour Guide.

The Sacramento Press-related Sacramento Local Online Ad Network (SLOAN), on the other hand, is a network of 31 local blogs and sites powered by Cox’s Adify, a vertical ad network publisher. It is geared toward providing a cable TV-like regional interconnect among local bloggers to build up a base of advertisers. It gets more than 540,000 unique visitors and 7 million impressions, and pulls in a CPM listed at $18.

Many of the Sacramento area blogs apparently take part in both networks (and many still have not joined either — the Connect team has ID’d 400 Sacramento area blogs). “I think it is an important step for The Bee to take a leadership position in building a healthy local media ecosystem in Sacramento,” says Ben Ilfeld, cofounder of Sacramento Press and SLOAN. “It proves they are serious about collaboration rather than strictly competition.”

Ilfeld adds that his team is currently expanding the concept to the Bay Area, where the Bay Area Publishers Partnership (BAPP) is being developed. “The Bay doesn’t have the same level of clear leadership,” he says. “There is no ‘Sacramento Connect’ option for those publishers. I would like to bring the same technology [it is a meebo widget] to our publishers there on top of our ad network.”

The post Sacramento Emerges as ‘Ground Zero’ for Blogger Networks appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Like Living Social’s earlier deal with The Washington Post, the deal is based on McClatchy’s powerful local promotion capabilities. Groupon deals will be promoted throughout newspaper Web sites in contextually relevant sections (i.e., dining). Print promotion, however, is not part of the deal at this point. Sales also aren’t part of the deal, which is nonexclusive. Other media companies can sign with Groupon both in McClatchy markets and outside them.

Groupon appears very likely to announce other local media deals in the near future — a likelihood driven by the efforts of Business Development VP Sean Smyth, a longtime local media vet with Tribune, Metromix and other local media companies. In general, there is recognition that Groupon has developed a presence in several McClatchy markets without any brand assistance. Groupon will, however, develop custom versions specifically for McClatchy readers.

At our Marketplaces conference last March in San Diego, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason said his early vision was to team with the Chicago Tribune, his hometown paper. But he soon realized that Groupon could roll out faster and with more editorial independence by working solo and relying primarily on telesales. Now, Groupon expects to surpass the Tribune’s circulation in Chicago by year-end. But evidently, newspapers’ local promotion capabilities remain a strong incentive for partnerships.

McClatchy VP Chris Hendricks tells us he sees a net plus for both companies by helping promote Groupon. “They’ve got their space,” but McClatchy offers Groupon more “entry points” to readers and deals, he says.

The deal also enables maximum flexibility for both companies. Conceivably, the Groupon deals could be included in a product suite, he says. The limited nature of the deal, and limited commitment, is also seen as a plus. “We have a lot of stuff going on,” says Hendricks. “An affiliate marketing program fits in better [and] lets us get out of the gate.”

The post Groupon, McClatchy Team for Daily Deals in 28 Markets appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

McClatchy Co., the third-largest newspaper entity with 30 newspapers in 29 markets, including The Miami Herald and The Sacramento Bee, will aggressively target SMBs in each of its markets via an extended deal with WebVisible. The deal, per release, “will help local advertisers provide the most efficient way to get found by customers no matter how they’re looking — in newspaper listings, newspaper web sites, or search engines, or via mobile phones or navigation devices.”

The company has had a long relationship with WebVisible, offering services in Kansas City; Tacoma, Washington; and Fresno. But now it is pulling out all the stops. Anchorage and Charlotte have already been added; the next phase will include Boise, Miami and Sacramento. By December, the rollout will encompass all 30 daily newspapers in 29 U.S. markets.

James Calloway, McClatchy VP of strategic development, tells us that McClatchy’s sales forces have seen a dramatic increase in advertisers demanding help for getting into search marketing. “There is a learning curve. It is a different state of mind,” he says. But McClatchy’s papers that have been working with WebVisible have “done well.”

Calloway says a key to getting it right has been to offer advertisers an option of going with either a guaranteed click model or a budget based model offering a range of services for a fixed amount. Over time, he sees the guaranteed model fading. But “we basically need to cover it,” he says.

Calloway’s gut feeling is that the offering will take some time to develop in each market, but that it will get decent numbers from the get-go and will continue to grow over time. It will be part of a broader package, he says. The WebVisible effort is being supported by McClatchy’s five-person local market development team, which is based in Miami. They work on a a SWAT team basis, in which they hit a market, get it going and move on to the next one. They are tasked with in-market sales training and ramping up revenues.

WebVisible recently raised $20 million, and has raised more than $37 million in all, as it competes against other third-party SMB sales companies such as ReachLocal, Yodle, Marchex and Orange Soda.

The post McClatchy Teams With WebVisible to Target SMBs in 29 Markets appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.