• by Tameka Kee , June 24, 2008

Yahoo HotJobs and Monster have both announced new ad products and partnerships heating up the online job search marketplace just in time for the beginning of summer. The HotJobs enhancements are aimed at improving relevancy and visibility for potential employers, while Monster's deals offer a lifeline to newspapers struggling to stay afloat amidst tanking print ad sales.

Yahoo HotJobs has rolled out Smart Ads--display ads that start out as job listings and then get served to active and passive job-seekers based on behavioral, contextual, geographic or search-targeting. The ads will be targeted to users across Yahoo's network based on info they enter during a HotJobs search, as well as other behaviors, including core searches on Yahoo.com, and articles read on vertical hubs like Yahoo Tech and Yahoo Shine.

According to Kevin Krim, vice president of product and strategy, Yahoo HotJobs, the Smart Ads provide an ideal blend of precision targeting and reach for employers, as Yahoo's network amasses over 140 million unique monthly visitors. "When you can combine so many unique visitors every month with the quantity of data that they've already given us, you can do really good targeting and deliver sufficient scale," Krim said. "It's tough if you're a smaller network to aggregate such a critical mass."

In addition, employers also have the option of linking the Smart Ads to Premium Company Profiles. The profiles--which feature the company's official branding and a list of all advertised positions--pull in content from across the Yahoo network, including financial data from Yahoo Finance and corporate culture questions from Yahoo Answers. Advertisers can also upload their own videos and Flickr slide shows.

Krim said that the profiles, which supplement standard HotJobs company pages, give employers a chance to highlight their workplace's personality, and participate in the conversations that are already going on about "what it's like to work for Verizon, or Sprint."

Monster's news, meanwhile, is all about newspaper partnerships and a set of joint-branded recruitment sites. The announcement comes on the heels of a New York Times feature that argues that newspapers are facing their worst year ever in terms of ad revenue, with pubs like the San Francisco Chronicle hemorrhaging $1 million each week.

So more than a dozen locally focused publications like the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the Santa Fe New Mexican have partnered with Maynard, Mass.-based Monster to roll out Web properties that feature resume-building tools, job listings, and career and salary advice from industry experts.

According to Peter Newton, Monster's senior vice president and general manager of media alliances, the partnerships give regional companies easier access to Monster's technology, services and candidate reach, and give the newspapers a fighting chance at monetizing their help-wanted ads more efficiently.

Monster has also inked a deal to syndicate print ads from six publications, including Ottaway Newspapers (the local media group of Dow Jones & Company) and the Las Vegas Review-Journal.