• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, April 15, 2009

QuadrantOne -- the online ad sales network launched last year by Gannett Co., Hearst Corp., The New York Times Co., and Tribune Co. -- today is expected to announce a partnership with The Associated Press to handle ad sales across the new service's digital platforms, including its mobile news portal, APNews.com, and various AP News apps.

QuadrantOne is owned by its four founding companies, but has actively sought affiliate partners to create a larger pool of online ad inventory for national advertisers. "QuadrantOne's understanding of the newspaper market makes them a logical partner," said Jeffrey Litvack, general manager of mobile and emerging products at AP.

AP News launched in May 2008 as the first product released by AP's Digital Cooperative, an initiative aimed at finding new digital outlets for news and information produced by AP members. Monthly traffic for AP Mobile has since exceeded 38 million page views.

QuadrantOne reaches well over 20 major markets and over a dozen smaller ones, with a network of newspaper and broadcast sites representing over 70 million unique monthly visitors. Now, QuadrantOne CEO Andy Ellenthal is setting his sights on the nascent world of mobile content. "AP Mobile is just the beginning of our expansion," Ellenthal said.

To simplify the buying process for large brand advertisers, QuadrantOne recently created a centralized pool of standardized ad units from newspapers nationwide, which can then be sold off in blocks.

The partnership comes amid solid growth in usership of online news resources. According to Nielsen Online, in January the number of monthly unique visitors to newspaper Web sites increased 7.9 million to 74.8 million, a jump of 11.9% over the same month in 2008.

Per the same measurements, 44% of all Web users visited newspaper Web sites in January, an increase of 7.3% over January 2008. The number of page views generated increased 15.4% to 3.7 billion.