More On Monster & Deal With Philly.com; Other Possibilities

Monster.com’s 2Q06 earnings just happened to coincide with the announcement that the Philadelphia newspapers and Philly.com would be switching from rival CareerBuilder.com. The deal with Philadelphia Media Holdings is the online job classifieds company’s first in the newspaper area, intriguing because newspapers clearly are major competition. A little more detail from the call as the subject came up in prepared remarks and Q&A (via transcript from SeekingAlpha.com):
Andy McKelvey, chairman & CEO, during opening comments: “We believe that the power of the Monster brand and the breadth of our product offering will provide the local newspaper sales force with a more effective and compelling service to offer their customers. On the Monster side, we gain immediate access to the local market, another of our top priorities as we look towards the future. …”
During Q& A Peter Appert of Goldman Sachs asked, “How important is this move? How strategic is it for you? How hard are you going to push to grow this channel? How big could this opportunity be for you?” McKelvey’s reply: “… It’s very difficult to answer the question. It’s kind of like we’re putting our toe in the water and we will see what happens. Today one newspaper is not strategic at all, but we know we’re going to increase our market share substantially in Philadelphia, in the local marketplace, so we want to see what that means in terms of market share, what that means in terms of financial. Also, what, if any, additional promotional value can the Inquirer give us? So it’s really the beginning of the beginning and we felt we would be remiss if we didn’t work with a newspaper to see what kind of potential this might offer. It hasn’t shifted overall. What we’re doing is taking business away from the newspapers and that strategy certainly hasn’t changed. So Philadelphia is kind of on its own and let’s see what happens over the next six to 12 months. That’s about the best I can answer.”
Related: CareerBuilder Loses Philly.com; Monster Gets First Major Newspaper Deal