• Forbes, Thursday, June 25, 2009 10:48 PM

Newspaper publishers will soon see if technology can help them sell more expensive ads. Alan Mutter, a former editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and technology consultant, is proposing an online registration service that would track Web users as they read articles on a plethora of publishers' sites. The new venture, called ViewPass, will compile personal data profiles comprised of demographic information and reading histories.

Publishers could use that data, Mutter says, to sell expensive hyper-targeted ads. Mutter says his ViewPass will give newspapers a clear look at the value of specific types of online readers to advertisers. In addition to compiling data on readers and creating narrow audience segments, the company will run real-time auctions for the opportunity to deliver an ad to narrow slices of readers.

ViewPass has joined Journalism Online, a startup that charges readers for online content, in meetings with struggling news publishers. Journalism Online would help package and market news content under a variety of brands and is backed by private investors. By comparison, Mutter's ViewPass would be owned by the participating publishers.

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