• January 6, 2005

Maynard, Mass.-based Monster, an online career Web site, announced Thursday that it would enter a strategic partnership with Internet Broadcasting Systems, an online local television network to try to better reach local markets. "IBS is, we think, a very good partner to work with as we look to increase our relevance within local communities," said Monster's Senior Vice President of Marketing, John Kelley.

Under the agreement, Monster will provide the career content for the education, technology, business and family sections of IBS Web sites, which serve over 60 major TV stations, including all stations owned by NBC, Hearst, Cox, and the Washington Post Company. Starting in January, IBS will promote the career pages with local TV spots, which will be co-branded for both IBS and Monster. IBS will also run online ads for the career pages on their own Web sites. Monster, and other job sites like it, already compete with local newspapers' classified sections--and according to Kelley, this localizing of Monster's services doesn't change the landscape. "Though we are an online provider, we obviously already compete on a local level with newspapers as well as with other online players," Kelley said. "This doesn't change the competitive environment for us."

A report in late 2004 by niche market firm Corzen, Inc. showed that revenue for the top job boards--CareerBuilder, Monster, and Yahoo! HotJobs--was 47 percent higher in the third quarter of 2004 than the third quarter of 2003, while newspaper help wanted ads showed a growth of only 16 percent nationally.

-- Shankar Gupta