• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, June 16, 2009

Village Voice Media is joining the ranks of big newspaper publishers offering advertisers integrated ad placement with other online publications. The move effectively puts its local sales teams at the disposal of other Web publishers targeting the same demographic as its chain of free community newspapers: 18-34s.

The new Voice Local Network promises wider exposure for local publishers and advertisers, while giving Village Voice Media a much-needed revenue boost. It also hopes to attract national advertisers interested in reaching audiences via local content.

The new network offers local ad placement combining Village Voice Media's Web sites with other local Web properties in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Denver, Seattle, Phoenix and Miami. Altogether, the 15 free newspapers published by Village Voice Media -- including The Village Voice, LA Weekly and Phoenix New Times -- employ about 200 people in sales, but the company plans to expand this in step with the new ad network service.

In addition to standard online ad formats, the new network is also offering email and mobile campaign options.

Scott Tobias, the president and COO of Village Voice Media, says: "We've been working the streets, merchant to merchant, for years developing personal relationships in all of our cities. Through these connections, we've developed a very high local CPM Web business. It's a natural evolution to help other publishers tap into our network of advertisers."

Recently, VVM revealed that it is currently deriving about 40% of its revenue from blogs hosted on its Web sites. It can now expand this business to include revenue-sharing agreements with other independently published blogs. Inaugural advertisers for the network include Web publishers LikeMe.net, Wolfgangvault.com, Curbed.com, Eater.com, Racked.com and Checkoutmyink.com.

At the national level, the Voice Local Network joins a number of other ad-sharing networks and ad placement platforms created by newspapers and online players in recent years.

Centro, founded in 2001, offers national advertisers a single point of purchase for placing ads across thousands of local online publications, including local newspapers of varying size. QuadrantOne was founded in February 2008 by Gannett, Tribune, Hearst and The New York Times Co. to offer advertisers a single-purchase mechanism for placing ads across online properties owned by those companies.

Yahoo has also created a newspaper consortium for sharing both editorial content and ad revenue, offering publishers and advertisers greater reach through affiliation with the search giant. Finally, Politico -- a Web site devoted to politics -- has also created an ad network that attracted scores of newspapers after launching last September; it has also struck content-sharing deals with some newspapers.