The Internet-only sales house, New Media Marketing and Sales, has won a
contract to sell the advertising for ADHunter, a regional newspaper
online classified consortium due to launch next year.
It marks the first major win for NMMS since the sales house opened in
August (Campaign, 16 August). ADHunter is a combination of nine regional
publishers, representing more than 60 per cent of local newspaper
circulation and 70 per cent of classified ads placed in the UK.
ADHunter takes to the Internet in three stages. The first phase sees the
launch of AutoHunter, which will comprise classified ads for cars,
motorbikes, commercial vehicles and caravans. This will be followed by
JobHunter and PropertyHunter.
The ADHunter initiative, touted as the most significant event for the
regional press in many years, has brought together for the first time
the biggest players in the business, including Northcliffe Newspapers,
Trinity and Newsquest, as well as Johnstone Press, United Provincial
Newspapers and the Manchester Evening News.
Richard Holman, the managing director of NMMS, commented: ‘The potential
for this service is enormous. It is specifically designed for the Web
and the UK and it offers consumers national access to regional
advertising, which has never existed before.’
NMMS will establish a specific department for ADHunter and will seek to
sign up advertisers and sponsors linked to the content of the site. This
could, for instance, include an insurance company providing an online
quote service that is linked to the AutoHunter service.
Ian Campbell, ADHunter’s project manager, said: ‘We took the view that
we needed an agency that could dedicate itself to us on the Web because
of the ground-breaking significance of ADHunter that will see the
regional press working in a way it has never done before.’
