Times Co and Monster form ad alliance

By Robert Gavin, Globe Staff

The New York Times Co. and Internet job search firm Monster Worldwide Inc. formed an alliance to sell help-wanted advertising, hoping to combine Monster’s national brand with the local market penetration of Times Co. newspapers, including The Boston Globe.

The alliance, disclosed yesterday, is the latest in a series of deals between old and new media turning fierce competitors into partners. Last year, for example, Yahoo Inc. formed a partnership with 176 daily newspapers to share content, technology, and advertising, including help-wanted. Meantime, search engine rival Google Inc. last year said it would use its technology to sell advertising in the print editions of 50 major newspapers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Driving these partnerships, analysts said, is a recognition that new and old media firms each hold competitive advantages that would be costly for the other side to overcome. Monster, for example, has leading edge data base and job-matching technologies, which Times Co. would otherwise have to develop from scratch, said Ken Doctor, lead news analyst at Outsell Inc., a market research firm in Burlingame, Calif. Conversely, Times Co. newspapers offer content and relationships with advertisers that would be equally difficult for Monster to develop on its own.

They’re both riding each other’s coattails, he said. Who eventually ends up driving, though, is still a question.

The Monster-Times Co. alliance brings together a leading online employment network boasting 25 million unique visitors a month with 19 Times Co. papers with strong positions in their markets. The deal will create co-branded helped-wanted and recruitment sites within the websites of Times Co. papers, including the Globe and The New York Times.

For example, readers of Boston.com, the Globe’s online affiliate, will be able to click through to the co-branded site, offering advertising, job listings, and features from both the Globe’s BostonWorks and Monster.com. The new sites will begin to appear in March. The print products, such as the Globe’s BostonWorks sections, also will be co-branded with Monster, the companies said.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Together with Monster, The New York Times Co. will significantly increase our presence in the online recruitment space, Times Co. chief executive Janet L. Robinson said in a statement.

William Pastore, chief executive of Monster Worldwide, said, The alliance significantly advances Monster’s strategy to provide highly localized online recruitment and career services.

Newspapers once dominated classified advertising, but have been losing that lucrative business to online competitors such as Monster in recent years. Monster, meanwhile, is facing tough online competition, from rival sites created by newspaper companies, such as Careerbuilder.com, and from Craigslist, the largely free online classified site.

Monster generates revenue by charging employers to advertise on its web site and for access to its huge database of resumes, which job seekers can post for free. Newspaper web sites have similar models.

Monster officials said the company has wanted to penetrate deeper into local markets to expand its share of listings and resumes, and considered building its own sites. But ultimately, they said, the company decided it would do better by forming alliances with local market leaders. Monster has formed alliances similar to the one with Times Co. with about 40 other papers, including The Philadelphia Inquirer.

We found that rather than strictly competing with newspapers, we could accelerate our ability to access local markets by partnering with them, said Douglas E. Klinger, president of Monster North America.

Times Co. officials said its newspapers’ help-wanted advertising sales will benefit from Monster’s brand, reach, and technology, including tools that help job seekers to match skills with jobs and employers to predict the success of candidates in particular jobs. Monster also will introduce a click-to-print feature on its Monster.com website, which will allow its customers to publish help-wanted ads in its partner newspapers, creating an additional source of revenue for the print products.

The Times Co. newspapers and Monster will maintain separate sales forces, which will sell ads for both the newspapers and Monster.com. The partnership will not result in job reductions, Times Co. officials said.

Times Co. stock gained 59 cents yesterday to close at $25.75. Monster shares gained 91 cents to close at $53.63.

Robert Gavin can be reached at rgavin@globe.com