News Site MinnPost Tries ‘Twitter-izing’ The Classifieds

Most of the activity in the non-profit media space recently has been on the news-gathering side. Now comes something on the business side. The MinnPost, the non-profit news site focused on the Twin Cities, has launched a new ad format that combines aspects of print classifieds with Twitter, Joel Kramer, the digital pub’s editor and CEO, tells NiemanLab. Called Real-Time Ads, the format is a kind of advertising-as-content concept, Kramer explains further on MinnPost.

The service collects Tweets, blog items and feeds from local marketers, and turns them into small-size ads. MinnPost will serve three randomly selected ads at time, which will rotate every time a reader goes to a new page on the site. Readers can choose to see all 32 ads, which is the most MinnPost can handle, at least right now. The site generally charges $15 CPMs for its display ads, but since the Real-Time Ads are focused on smaller businesses, MinnPost plans to charge marketers under $100 per week to participate. Kramer was inspired to use adopt the format after spotting its use by local Minneapolis blog The Deets and Chicago news aggregator WindyCitizen.