• December 20, 2006

Employers spent more on online recruitment advertising than newspaper job ads--$5.9 billion to $5.4 billion--for the first time in 2006, according to a new study released Tuesday by market research firm Borrell Associates Inc. The report says this online shift will continue over the next five years as Internet job listings hit $10 billion in 2011--or 13.7% of overall recruitment dollars compared to 6.5% for newspaper ads.

In order to boost its share of local job ads, Monster has forged partnerships with newspapers dumping CareerBuilder such as The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader and the Akron Beacon Journal. Yahoo's HotJobs also made a play for more local classifieds, striking agreements with eight publishing companies representing more than 200 newspapers nationwide.

The report questions whether these alliances will benefit newspapers in the long-term. "In the end, the newspapers that fled to Monster or HotJobs wound up doing exactly what they shouldn't: Abandoning a billion-dollar investment in their own product and building up brands they have spent years trying unsuccessfully to degrade," the report stated.

--Mark Walsh