ACBJ launches small biz platform, to sell ads for parent's dailies

Lucia Moses of Mediaweek reports that American City Business Journals, which operates 40 weekly business newspapers across the country, will begin selling advertising for the dailies owned by its parent, Advance Publications, and will launch a site for small business owners.

Moses writes, “ACBJ will start selling into the business sections of Advance’s newspaper sites as well as non-ACBJ sites like Crain’s Chicago Business and local chambers of commerce. With the partner sites, ACBJ will double its online audience, to 15 million uniques.

“Meanwhile, ACBJ is rolling up its print, digital and events properties into a new platform, called The Business Journals. It’ll include ACBJ’s own 40 local business papers and their Web sites and Portfolio.com, the online survivor of Condé Nast’s defunct glossy magazine.

“Mike Olivieri, ACBJ’s first chief revenue officer, said the new platform is aimed at growing national advertising, now 15 percent of ACBJ’s revenue, to at least 20 percent.

“ACBJ thinks its network eventually could extend overseas, which is why Olivieri said the company left ‘American’ off the new platform name. ‘We didn’t want to be limited,’ he said.”

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