Tech Town, NC

Raleigh-based Real Cities Network announced on Tuesday it will sell online advertising for an additional 51 newspapers owned by the Media News Group, adding to the 31 MNG newspapers already represented by Real Cities. With this agreement Real Cities now sells ads for all 82 newspaper website operated by the Media News Group.

This agreement makes plenty of sense and isn’t all that remarkable, but it begs the question – Just who should be selling online advertising? Real Cities is owned by McClatchy, and Media News Group is a major competitor of McClatchy, so why does MNG need help selling ads?

Generally newspapers have their own ad sales teams, and this local force has been a huge asset in the past. Without a dedicated sales team local businesses just don’t advertise. With online ads, newspapers have been unable to charge rates they think are worthwhile, so their sales departments have ignored that market. That’s allowed lots of other parties to eat their lunch. Blogads, Adify, Federated Media, and even Google, to name a few, have all been doing the work needed to help the market for local-online ads to mature. The consequence has been a complete loss of control by the newspapers, and a growing mistrust between old and new media. Real Cities is now doing some of that work under the McClatchy umbrella. What this agreement says to me is that Media News Group has been too slow to adapt.

I’ll have more on this topic soon, but for now, I’ll be looking closely for more developments in this space.