quadrantOne to Focus on Mobile Ad Sales for AP

Online newspaper ad network quadrantOne will now sell ads on behalf of Associated Press. According to quadrantOne, the firm will run national ad sales specifically for AP’s mobile news portal apnews.com and AP News apps.

The relationship isn’t much of a stretch, considering quadrantOne was formed by paper giants Hearst, Gannett, The New York Times, and Tribune, and its network is comprised mainly of newspaper sites. The AP, of course, is a coalition of paper publishers.

As paper companies struggle to monetize and navigate the new realities of online media distribution (The NY Times reports today that newspaper ad revenues may have plummeted as much as 30 percent for some papers in Q1.), the AP recently made headlines for announcing it plans to crack down on what it called “misappropriation” of its online news content. The organization said it would develop new search pages that direct users to breaking news. The move was largely viewed by observers as a direct attack on Google, which sometimes points users to non-AP affiliated sites featuring AP news stories.

So, is mobile advertising the next frontier for struggling news outlets? It’s great to see the AP investing in mobile in this way, yet just how much that will contribute to the bottom line remains to be seen. Perhaps the AP relationship will prompt other quadOne networks to think more about mobile ad offerings….