The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 26

Monster.com @ Phila. papers

By Joseph N. DiStefano
Inquirer Staff Writer

Philadelphia Media Holdings L.L.C. has picked the online job site Monster.com to replace CareerBuilder.com as its help-wanted ad partner for The Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com, starting in mid-August.

Online ads are a small but rapidly growing moneymaker for newspapers, which have been scrambling to hold onto help-wanted customers and profits as more hiring offices and job-seekers move to the Web.

The Philadelphia newspapers gross more than $10 million a year from online job ads -- just 2 percent of total revenue -- but online ads have been growing by double-digit annual margins while department-store, auto and other, larger categories have fallen recently, according to Joe Natoli, publisher of the Philadelphia newspapers.

The switch announced July 25 is a blow to CareerBuilder, which is jointly owned by the nation's largest newspaper chains, including Gannett Corp. and Tribune Co. A CareerBuilder spokeswoman did not return calls for comment on what the loss of Philadelphia would mean to the business.

It is the first major newspaper deal for Monster, according to Doug Klinger, president of the North American division of the job service's owner, Monster Worldwide Inc., a publicly traded company based in Maynard, Mass.

Philadelphia had been locked into a relationship with CareerBuilder by its former owner, the defunct Knight Ridder Inc. But the relationship had been up for grabs since the McClatchy Co. put the Philadelphia newspapers up for sale after agreeing to buy Knight Ridder last spring.

Philadelphia newspaper executives had discussed joint online help-wanted sales with Monster, CareerBuilder and Yahoo during the last two months, and also considered setting up their own rival operation, before settling on Monster, according to accounts by Philadelphia Media chief executive officer Brian Tierney and other newspaper officials.

The deal means that Philadelphia ad salespeople who have spent recent years extolling CareerBuilder at Monster's expense will now have to reverse their pitch.

But ad analysts said that might not be too difficult.

"Monster is far and away the largest player in the space, and should increase traffic to Philly.com," said Shawn Riegsecker, chief executive of Centro, a Chicago online media buying service that serves national ad agencies in local markets.

Monster dominates among large employers who use the Web, but is trying to expand its reach among small and mid-size companies -- exactly where regional newspapers such as The Inquirer and the chains that own CareerBuilder are strongest, according to Mark S. Marcon, a staffing-companies analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. in Chicago.

Among the services that made Monster attractive was its 24-hour customer service, Natoli said.

To seek more newspaper business, Monster last year hired longtime Boston Globe advertising executive Peter Newton, said Klinger. Newton, who had earlier turned down Natoli's offer to serve as head of advertising for the Philadelphia newspapers, helped negotiate the deal.

The Philadelphia newspapers plan to keep using CareerBuilder through the first two weeks of August, but will begin selling ads in concert with Monster after that, Natoli said.

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