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Round-up of 2011 MediaXChange

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 With a few exceptions, were not a lot of “shiny new toys” at this year's  MediaXChange (last year Group deals were cutting edge), just a general hunkering down to execute and optimize projects already underway. 2011 seems to be the year for most the most advanced companies to focus on building out strategies - and the rest to catch up.

Here are some of successful strategies in the works:

•The Washington Post's Vice President of New Ventures, Digital, Tim Condon, talked about ServiceAlley, a partnership now open to third parties. He said the launch, only about two months old,  will boast $230,000 in first year revenues, and that he is planning on $600,000 in year two (we have posted a case study of this initiative).

• Over at Philly.com, Yoni Greenbaum, Vice president, Product Development liked results from FanDuel, a fantasy sports betting site. You can find our original coverage of this opportunity in this article


•The end of the story is important: The New York Times Digital Media Group picked up an extra $20,000 a month from a simple, free widget, provided by Outbrain. According to Dan Shorter, Vice President, Digital Media, the widget provides more sophisticated related-story links that increased traffic by 7% as well. Case study on this to come.

•In the hallway, I caught up with Chris Edwards, Vice President of Sales and Customer Care, who explained how his sales team has converted to a “hunters and gatherers” structure and is now finally on its way to meeting its own hefty new contract goal. 

•Just a point of interest, Edwards like key note speaker John Paton, CEO and President, of Journal Register Company, says his company has moved to straight commission for all outside sales people. Paton has been hard at work leading some of the most radical transformation initiatives,  as hardcore as dropping all proprietary software,  ("I won't be able to walk through the next room without getting shot," he said, referring to the vendors in the exhibit hall),  and  hiring Blinder Group for a sales blitz that has since topped $1 million in new revenues.


•The New York Times was just about to launch its metered model, but more interesting was a conversation with Chris Henderson of the Dallas Morning News, also trying out the same model in a more “local” market. Stay tuned.

•Also at the end of the story: More companies are switching commentary threads to a Facebook logins, saying the quality of the comments imporves when they are not anonymous.

*And finally, Brent Lowe of MediaOneUtah explained how his company is replacing real estate classifieds with a fixed price brokerage, an idea which Sanjose.com a site associated with Metro Publishing, Inc. has also done (full disclosure, I worked on that project).  Real estate brokerage is a great busines  model once it’s off the ground; nothing like $4000 or $5000 per sale coming in,  and launching at the bottom of the market is not a bad strategy.

Many thanks this week to Jason Fulmines, Director of Digital products for Gannett who talked about mobile mistakes and shared his expertise with us. 

condon, washington post, blinder, shorter, philly.com, outbrain, gazette, edwards