Monster and Adicio announced today that they had formed a partnership whereby Adicio’s daily newspaper clients can upsell their advertisers’ job listings on Monster. Clearly, the deal makes sense for both Monster and Adicio. Monster gains access to hundreds of newspaper company sites and print publications, while Adicio continues to add functionality to their classified service offering. Holding the short end of the stick are the newspaper companies who opt into the Monster network and cede more ground in the classified space. It will be interesting to watch how many Adicio clients choose to do so, though given the pathetic condition of the daily newspapers today I won’t be surprised if many do. Faring even worse will be the employer advertisers who naively believe that buying an extra, upsold ad on Monster will do anything to help improve the effectiveness of their recruitment advertising. As Nick Corcodilos points out in an excellent post entitled “The Budget For Stupidity,” the odds that a major job board can successfully facilitate a match between an employer and a jobseeker are preposterously low. But just as the state lotteries have prevailed with catchy slogans (“All you need is a dollar and a dream” & “You can’t win if you don’t play”) Monster, too, has been pretty good at spending money to make people feel like they have a shot at beating horrendous odds.
Time to read the daily paper today: 8 minutes and 51 seconds.
Daily recommendation for the dailies: Given how anemic the business section is, newspaper web sites should provide an online archive of all the press releases issued by local businesses. I’d imagine that hundreds of press releases are sent to the daily paper every day but never see the light of day. But buried in those press releases are some potentially interesting stories and lots of good information. Why not simply post them online, provide an RSS feed, and let people find the information they might find useful on their own? The costs are low, the value add is potentially high, and it would be a great service for the local business community.