Best Innovation in Key Verticals

Best Innovation in Key Verticals

Best Innovative Recruitment Strategy

Owner: Graham Holdings

Company: Washington Post Company

Market: Washington Post Media - Washington, DC

Population: 5.8 million

Circulation: 474,767

Key executive: Matthew Radke, Marketing Strategy Manager

Judges take: While there have not been many bright spots in the classifieds universe, a few companies have found ways to upsell recruitment across social networks and additional properties. The WashingtonPost company has been a leader in this area with a number of social upsells including Twitter channels, and a TweetMyJobs partnership that paid off in 2014 with YOY growth. The Washington Post is overlooked as a digital leader; it is on our editor's list of companies to watch in 2014.

* LMI story: Adding Twitter to recruitment ads

Best innovative Real Estate Strategy 

Company: Utah Media Group

Initiative: UtahMore

Market: Deseret Digital Media - Salt Lake City, UT

Population: 1,953,000

Key executive: Brent Low, President/CEO

Judges take: As real estate sections continue to be crushed, first by Craigslist and now by Zillow and Trulia, it speaks volumes that the most successful initiative of 2014 is one that abandoned a traditional classifieds model in favor of a super site fueling a real estate agency, UtahMore.

Significant year-over-year sales increases are powered by print, and by multiple individual agent sites. Once considered experimental, the company has steadily maintained a 3% market share of real estate sales in Salt Lake City, growing every year as the market has improved into a $3 million plus revenue stream with double-digit YOY growth.

* LMI story: Utah Media Groups real estate brokerage

Automotive Innovation

Company: Digital First Media

Market: Bay Area News Group - San Francisco, CA

Population: 7.44 million

Key executive: Christopher Petranech, Automotive Digital Advisor

Judges take: Like real estate, automotive classifieds have been hard hit and few newspapers have encouraging stories to tell. A lone example is Digital First Media whose partnership with Tapclassifieds to sell a best-of-breed service that manages Craigslist ads is paying off.

This platform creates a sticky relationship on the classifieds side, offering craigslist management, leads integration to the CRM, per-car analytics.

Also in the mix of automotive sales products moving the daily are Email and targeting cars by brand preferences.

* LMI story: Quad City Ford generates new leads

Not a member yet? Join now for 50% off in 2015.

Keywords