• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 15, 2010

CityGrid Media wants to give publishers an alternative to Google's ad content network, so the IAC business unit Wednesday unveiled a reseller program allowing companies that might have the sales force, but not the products, to sell ad space through a private-label network.

The deal to authorize other companies to sell CityGrid Media's ad products builds on a push to connect Web and mobile publishers with local advertisers. Announced in June, CityGrid became the umbrella for publishing sites Citysearch, Insider Pages and Urbanspoon.

Through this new offering, CityGrid hopes to attract consumer traffic to build out the content ad network and attract advertisers, because without advertisers it is not likely to sign up more publishers to push out ads.

The continuous circle to build out the ad content network should give advertisers an alternative to Google AdSense and the Mountain View, Calif.'s ad content network, according to Neil Salvage, executive vice president of advertising at CityGrid Media. "We have been working on this for three years, so it's not like it's something we came up last quarter and rolled out this quarter," he says. "Someone has to look after this space, so why not us."

Salvage says Google is one of CityGrid Media's biggest partners -- driving a ton of traffic to the network of sites -- but the company wants to become a real alternative to Google AdSense for Publishers, as well as Google AdWords and network programs for small businesses.

CityGrid Media's private-label services allow local sales organizations to immediately begin selling into the local online ad market without building an entire dedicated sales team to capitalize on the U.S. local online ad space that BIA/Kelsey estimates will reach nearly $20 billion this year, up 26% from last year.

User Friendly Media, the parent company of The User Friendly Phone Book and GoLocal247.com, became the first company to sign up for the service. The white-label offering branded User Friendly Media has the support of CityGrid tools like the ability to enter orders into the combined system. User Friendly sells the program and shares the revenue on sales.

Logically, as more companies get added, the network that spans across Citysearch and other publisher sites continues to grow. Salvage says CityGrid realized early that sites like Citysearch support "a good deal of traffic," but not all consumers spend time there. So this gives a local beauty spa in New York City an opportunity to push content through a network of publishers. Today, that network spans more than 200 sites.

Since launching its local network two years ago, CityGrid moved from one consumer Internet site to one of the largest local advertising networks on the Web, with more than 700,000 advertisers; more than 140 million monthly unique visitors; 200 publisher sites, including AOL, Mapquest and Bing; and resellers SuperPages.com, DEX, Local.com, YP.com.