This alliance will offer marketers an expanded reach of industry professionals in Penton's key markets and ACBJ's geographical locations, through cross-Web advertising.

In a phone call with Publishers Daily, Penton vice president, data sales and market leader Joann Kropp said Penton has about 20 million relationships in 16 different industries. Their job is to target “that right person at the right time with the right offer.”

For example, if a client wants to market a new software product to high-level engineers in certain industries and in a specific geographic location, Penton uses data points to target the right audience and send them the offer.

Now, with ACBJ’s local reach in 43 markets, marketers looking at specific industry segments or geographic markets will have a greater audience reach.

“The ACBJ relationship gives advertisers the ability to reach [highly-qualified business people] in a more localized and generally news setting. The reciprocal relationship holds true wherein ACBJ advertisers will be able to utilize Penton sites,” stated Warren Bimblick, group president of SmartReach, a Penton division that deals with partnerships and monetizing Penton’s database.

For example, Bimblick told Publishers Daily that if a Penton client is running an event in Atlanta about aviation, they would want to target Penton subscribers in the region.

With the new partnership, “we would be able to put that advertising in the ACBJ site in Atlanta to not only reinforce the message to people who would go [to that site], but to find other people who might be interested,” he said.

Kropp said that their strategy is preferable over programmatic, which is “out of our control once they go out into these networks.”

ACBJ will also be placing ads on Penton Web sites, to bring more readership to their own geotargeted area. Kropp explained that ACBJ’s Web audience are people  interested in local business news, such as new businesses cropping up, commerce and changes to the local economy.

Bimblick added that Penton is “constantly” approached about partnerships, but their eyes “lit up” when they connected with ACBJ, due to their “local footprint,” which Penton didn’t previously offer.

Kropp told Publishers Daily that all publishers have the same challenge, “to put quality ads on our Web sites.”