Tribune Publishing has partnered with LocalEdge, a digital marketing company owned by Hearst Corp., to offer small and medium-sized businesses a suite of online marketing tools, the companies
announced Wednesday. The online services will be marketed to local businesses by Tribune’s various newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Baltimore
Sun.
Through the partnership with LocalEdge, Tribune will offer small and medium-sized business owners services including Web site design and hosting for both desktop and mobile
devices, online video, SEM and SEO, online reputation management, social media marketing and email and SMS text-messaging services.
Clients can manage all these assets and track performance
through an online dashboard.
Tribune joins a number of other newspaper publishers that have already partnered with Hearst’s LocalEdge, including The New York Daily News, The
Star Tribune of Minneapolis and the Morris Publishing Group.
Tribune and Hearst are not the only newspaper publishers offering digital marketing services to local advertisers.
Last month, Media General launched a new marketing and advertising service called Advanced Digital Solutions, which allows advertisers to target consumers based on a variety of factors, including
geography, content, behavior, income and device via channels including display, mobile, video, email and search engine marketing.
In January, Cox announced that its newspaper
publishing division has partnered with Adpay to create a new classifieds platform serving over 4 million print and online readers in a number of markets. The new platform -- which offers classifieds
advertisers premium features, including “Top Ads,” “Featured Ads,” “Route Mapping” and “Aggregated Search” -- will be deployed at Cox newspapers,
including The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Palm Beach Post, The Palm Beach Daily News, The Austin American-Statesman and The Dayton Daily News.
A quick look at Tribune's balance sheet would suggest these are the last guys whose advice anyone should follow.
What does it cost to take on Local Edge if you are the publisher reselling it? I take it there is minimums and licensing as well as per unit/service sold.