Web 3.0 & McClatchy (Part 2)

Vertical Strategy

McClatchy, in partnership with Belo Corporation, Gannett, Tribune and The Washington Post Company owns Classified Ventures. Classified Ventures’ objective is to collectively capitalize on the revenue growth in the online classified advertising categories of automotive, apartments, and real estate. McClatchy’s various positions in the verticals are sometimes held by the company itself, often in collaboration with Gannett, Tribune, and other newspaper companies, and sometimes held by Classified Ventures. In this section, we will take stock of what they own in which vertical, and how those online properties are doing.

Jobs
CareerBuilder founded in 1995, is owned by Gannett, Tribune, and McClatchy. It is a job site where users can search or post jobs and resumes, gather information about companies and seek career related advice from experts. The site has 400 million monthly page views and over 21 million monthly unique visitors. The site averages more than 1.5 million job postings per month. Microsoft bought a minority stake in the company in May 2007.

The site has 1200 partners and is the number one job site in the US. CareerBuilder places help-wanted ads in Europe and Asia, as well as in U.S. markets. McClatchy owns 14.4% of CareerBuilder.

Shopping
ShopLocal is the leading multi-channel marketplace, which links potential customers and the product sellers. Gannett, Tribune and McClatchy own it. ShopLocal LLC is growing at 30% a year and planning innovative offerings for retail advertisers. It offers a wide range of products from various large retailers like Target, Sears, The Home Depot, JC Penny and Best buy. ShopLocal has less than $100 million in revenue but has built a strong Web presence. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, ShopLocal’s home page attracted 9 million unique visitors, in March 2007 up 26% from the previous year.

McClatchy holds a 15% ownership stake and all of the company’s newspapers enjoy affiliation agreements with ShopLocal. McClatchy acquired its ownership in 2006 with the purchase of Knight Ridder, Inc.

Real Estate
In the Real Estate space, Classified Ventures operates various sites including Apartments.com, HomeGain.com and Homescape.com.

Apartments.com offers consumers and advertisers the ability to post their own apartments for rent across the entire network of more than 200 affiliated newspaper and television sites. HomeGain has over 4.5 million unique visitors a month and more than 300 partnerships, including Yahoo!, Google, MSN, AOL, cnnfn, CitySearch, Fox News, and more. The McClatchy Company owns 25.6% of Classified Ventures.

Autos
Cars.com is a property of Classified Ventures and is fast emerging as a major player in the online automotive industry. Cars.com leverages the sales and marketing strength of its network of 200 local newspapers and television stations, and nurtures the development of dealer products.

It has a presence in 26 of the top 30 markets in the United States and has a network of approximately 4,000 single-point dealer franchises. Cars.com also offers integrated solutions to automotive OEM’s, and advertising and e-commerce partners interested in accessing automotive consumers through Cars.com’s media platform.

Social News
Topix is a leading news community on the Web. It is a Top 20 online news destination (Hitwise, July 2007) and links news from 50,000 sources to 360,000 lively user-generated forums. Topix also works with the nation’s major media companies to grow and engage their online audiences through forums, classifieds, publishing platforms and RSS feeds. More than 1 million people have posted 5.5 million comments, adding more than 30,000 comments a day. With McClatchy’s purchase of Knight Ridder in 2006, McClatchy acquired part ownership. Today, McClatchy has an 11.25% ownership stake and all of the company’s newspapers enjoy affiliation agreements.

Other
McClatchy Interactive develops and maintains flexible online products that serve a wide range of functions including content management system, registration and data collection services, hosting and design services, ad management, news content and technical expertise needed to create and support compelling news sites.

The Real Cities Network is the nation’s largest network of local newspaper sites. With over 1,500 affiliate sites and a presence in the nation’s top 25 DMA’s, Real Cities reaches more than 44 million unique visitors each month.

Gaps in the McClatchy portfolio
McClatchy is not present in some of the most important and rapidly growing categories like personal finance, dating & matchmaking, gaming, music, photo-sharing, film, sports, and women. Given its newspaper roots, like Gannet, Business and Finance, Personals, and Sports are likely the obvious areas that they should tap into next, while strengthening their positions in the Jobs, Real Estate, and Auto verticals in particular. This would mean focusing their acquisitions and deal making efforts on these segments.

(To Be Continued)

[Part 1]

This segment is part 2 in the series : Web 3.0 & McClatchy
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