Interactive One will handle all ad sales for the network. The deal comes not long after Radio One bought Community Connect, a company that built online social networks targeting various ethnic groups, including African-Americans and Latinos. The acquisition gives Radio One advertisers access to the Web sites, which offer display advertising, as well as sponsorship opportunities. It will also allow Radio One to offer more integrated cross-media campaigns.

Radio One’s announcement followed the introduction of new digital initiatives by CBS Radio, Clear Channel, and Emmis, among others.

Just over a month ago, CBS Radio announced content and ad-sharing partnerships with AOL and Last.fm, the online radio portal it acquired in May 2007. In addition to giving the users of the two Internet platforms access to audio content from CBS Radio station Web sites, the deals made CBS Radio the exclusive ad sales agent for both platforms.

CBS also introduced Play.It, a new feature that allows users to create their own customized online radio station, choosing music and sharing their personal “broadcast” with friends.

Over the last several weeks, Clear Channel Radio has rolled out a number of new digital offerings, beginning with Erockster, a new socially mediated online radio network dedicated to electronic music that tweaks content according to listener ratings. On Monday, Clear Channel announced a partnership with Gracenote to make song lyrics readily accessible to visitors to its station Web sites, as well as a deal with Clearspring for widget syndication, which will allow users to link their Web pages to audio and video content on Clear Channel station Web sites.

Clear Channel also quietly launched a new national Web site, www.Iheartmusic.com, which includes an interactive directory of over 750 of the group’s station Web sites. It’s developing a feature that allows Web listeners to create their own customized online radio tuner, somewhat like CBS Radio’s Play.It. The custom tuner feature is tentatively scheduled to launch in June.

On the ad sales side, the nation’s largest radio group is also announcing a partnership with StudioNow, an online network of video advertising freelancers, to help local advertisers produce professional-grade video and display ads for Clear Channel station sites. Clear Channel will also launch a new business-to-business site, Totalradius.com, that will tout all the new possibilities of radio for advertisers, including new online offerings.

Emmis Communications’ online division, Emmis Interactive, has signed a licensing agreement with iTunes to market the Emmis-iTunes “Storefront” to other online radio broadcasters. Storefront is a customized interface created by Emmis to integrate iTunes sales into a broadcast Web site. Emmis Interactive’s first job will be to create an online presence for Renda Broadcasting, a Pennsylvania-based broadcaster that owns several dozen radio stations around the country.

Early in the year, TargetSpot–an online radio ad service developed by CBS Radio and venture capitalists–signed up six new partners, including inTune.fm, a popular audio application on Facebook. In mid-March, Cox Radio said that it will provide information from all its U.S. stations to RadioTime, which allows Internet users to browse, search and listen to online radio from terrestrial stations with its RadioGuide interface. In mid-April, Ronning Lipset Radio, an ad sales rep firm for online radio, bulked up its executive team with new hires from XM Satellite Radio and Yahoo Music.

In March, Katz Advantage announced a major reorganization of its marketing operations to better communicate radio’s qualities and new capabilities to advertisers, including a major focus on burgeoning Internet offerings.

Finally, the Radio Advertising Bureau announced a reorganization to increase radio’s share of ad dollars by putting the spotlight on its new capabilities, including online radio. The RAB also named John Potter as vice president of interactive revenue development.

Last week, Westwood One named Richard Kosinski, formerly a vice president of political advertising for Yahoo, its new senior vice president and chief digital officer, succeeding Gary Krantz, who left in March.

Magazines were the single most effective medium in Chrysler’s 2006 ad campaign when it launched its new 2006 Jeep Compass, according to a study performed by Dynamic Logic and commissioned by the Magazine Publishers of America.

The Dynamic Logic online survey of 4,300 people, conducted between July and December 2006, gave the primary spot to magazines, which exerted the most influence on consumer behavior–both by themselves and in combination with other media, such as TV and online advertising. The effectiveness of various media was measured by exposure and cost-per-impression, per person.

The study gives magazines a crucial boost in a period when auto ad dollars are generally flowing away from print and toward TV–a traditional favorite of auto advertisers–and online, which offers all the advantages of interactivity. Magazines aren’t the chief victims of this desertion; newspapers take the biggest hits. In the first quarter, magazines saw auto ads decline by a relatively small amount–from 4033 pages to 3,882–while newspapers have seen auto classifieds tumble over 20%. National display ad figures for the first quarter for newspapers are not yet available.

In one critical finding, the DL study also found that magazines were the most efficient medium for influencing consumer behavior at each stage of the so-called “purchase funnel” or consumer decision process. That gave magazines an extra boost versus online–which, according to conventional wisdom, dominates the research and product comparison stages.

Also this week, the MPA staged the first “virtual” presentation of the Kelly Awards, which again had auto advertising in the spotlight. The MPA gave the Grand Prize Kelly Award, which carries a $100,000 prize, to California’s Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners for its “Covert” campaign for Mini USA. This was the first time the MPA gave the top spot to an integrated campaign.

Stuff Offers ShopText

Stuff readers who are digging a particular piece of merchandise will soon have the option of sending a simple text message to buy it. Due to launch in September, the new service will also allow them to request samples of certain products specified in the magazine’s editorial content. As part of the program, Stuff plans to roll out “promotional pages” aggregating a number of products in one place for readers to browse and order. These promotional pages will serve as “value added” extras for advertisers in the product-heavy magazine.

CMP Combines Pubs

CMP Technology is restructuring some of its biggest publications. The Information Week brand is absorbing two sister publications, Network Computing and Optimize. In addition, CRN and VAR Business are dropping monthly distribution from six issues to four. Third, the edit staffs of EE Times and Techonline will be merged. Fourth, Sys Admin is shutting down, and its editorial and advertising resources will be absorbed by Dr. Dobb’s Journal. Finally, ICMI (formerly Call Center Magazine) is going to be an online-only publication.

BPA Rejiggers Circulation Rules

The BPA is adjusting some of its circulation rules, the organization announced this week. Among the changes: magazines that are distributed free to members of business associations can only be counted as part of circulation if the associations’ board of directors pass a resolution saying that a free subscription is a benefit of membership. If the subscriptions are simply paid for by the association, without a resolution, they will be counted as “sponsored sales.” In addition, digital distribution of such publications must include an “opt-out” feature to be counted. Digital circulation will be detailed separately throughout BPA circulation reports.

From 2000-2005, growth was split between immigration and natural increase of the resident Hispanic population, according to Mercanti’s Edgar Mendez, who led the study. But in recent years–despite popular perceptions to the contrary–Hispanic immigration has been declining, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Now, natural growth has the upper hand, with a substantial base population tending to produce families larger than the national average (3.87 versus 3.19).

As the population’s characteristics shift, the most important area of difference for advertisers will be language.

While 73% of Hispanic immigrants prefer Spanish over English, the number falls to 25% of their children and just 1% of their grandchildren. With a larger proportion of Hispanics being born in the U.S., English will increasingly supplant Spanish as the most effective language for marketing messages.

This forecast seems to contradict other recent studies, including a 2006 Unilever survey, “Winning the Hispanic Shopping Trip,” which found Hispanic shoppers respond positively to in-store communications in Spanish. But that survey’s middle-aged female subjects are far more likely to belong to the immigrant cohort; the linguistic shift resulting from changing patterns of birth and immigration will take decades to play out.

There are some early signs that advertisers are planning ahead.

According to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, Spanish-language TV leaders Univision and Telemundo are having a hard time courting ad dollars from banking and financial-service categories, since media planners are skeptical of the need for Spanish-language media. Although overall Spanish-language ad spending rose 14.4% in 2006, to $5.9 billion, according to research cited from the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies, 100 of the top 250 advertisers didn’t include any Spanish-language component in their advertising.

However, the increasing preference for English doesn’t mean tailored multicultural messages aren’t necessary: Third-generation Hispanics, born in the U.S., retain a sense of Hispanic identity and heritage that translates into English-language media consumption and purchasing decisions. For example, one popular new magazine, Urban Latino, is an English-language publication catering to the “New Generation Latino”–ages 18-34–with music, lifestyle, health and beauty content. The same phenomenon is powering the emergence of a new, mostly English-language radio genre, “hurban” (“Hispanic Urban”).

Still, Mercanti’s research shows a continued affinity for products from the country of origin, even among non-immigrant descendants born in the U.S.–resulting, for example, in a boom in the Mexican food market, which now tops $52 billion a year. Here, the study found that Hispanic consumers visit grocery stores three times as often as the population at large.

For marketers looking for broad reach, one increasingly popular solution (in print, at least) is bilingual publication–producing magazines with duplicate content assuring accessibility to Hispanic readers regardless of age, date of arrival or national origin.

Recently, Unilever announced that its ViveMejor Hispanic marketing program, produced by Mass Hispanic Marketing, will include a bilingual Web site and free bilingual magazine. To cater to the older Hispanic market, a mix of relatively recent arrivals and longtime U.S. citizens, AARP produces a bilingual magazine titled Segunda Juventud (“Second Youth”).

The U.S. Hispanic population remains an attractive market. According to Mercanti, its buying power will grow from $838 billion in 2006 to $1.3 trillion in 2011.

In effect, local stores will be able to advertise in other local stores using neighborhood networks. The network may also prove useful to national advertisers looking for local access.

Ripple has already established video displays at 400 locations throughout Southern California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii. The network’s co-founder and president, Ali Diab, says it reaches an estimated 10 million consumers a month and hopes to expand the network to thousands of locations nationally by the end of 2007.

The core of the service is an online component, Ripple Ad Center, which allows retailers to design their own programming and target it to as many locations as necessary using targeted metrics. Ad messages are inserted into a content stream drawn from major content providers, like CBS News, Yahoo and local news, which runs local sports scores, weather and traffic. Ripple’s flat-screen video displays are installed in retail establishments, such as coffee shops, bookstores, shopping malls and fast-food outlets.

“We are building a nationwide network of locations in communities across the country that offers unprecedented hyper-local advertising opportunities to businesses of every size,” says Diab. “The neighborhood sporting goods store down the street now has the capability to build a TV-quality ad, place it in the coffee shop a few doors down and have the power to change or adjust that campaign on the fly using the Ripple Ad Center.”

Vivian Schiller, NYTimes.com’s senior vice president and general manager, said the site has given advertisers what they’ve wanted–a vehicle to reach the small-business community that “aggregates all of the great reporting we do in this area, as well as carefully selected partner content.” Among the advertisers for the Web site’s launch are American Express, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard and FedEx.

Among the online-only columns are regular features like “Entrepreneurial Edge,” an extension of James Flanigan’s monthly print column, including his notes and blog entries; “In the Hunt,” a column by Brent Bowers, which covers the world of small business; and “Shifting Careers” by Marci Alboher, describing the personal-professional implications of a changing business landscape. Also available in the section will be books, blogs, conferences, seminars and podcasts of interest to small-business owners.

As an added user bonus, the site hosts a Small Business Resource Center that will host topic pages on start-ups, finance and capital, marketing, sales, e-commerce, human resources, legal issues, retail and franchising, and technology and operations. Each page will include news, archival information, how-to guides and links to other resources.

The most ominous news, however, concerns its interactive media division, including the Shopzilla and uSwitch online price comparison sites.

Based on first-quarter results and second-quarter projections, full-year profit from the interactive properties is expected to fall in the range of $30-$40 million–just half of the $60-$70-million range previously forecast by the company.

As shopping comparison sites, Shopzilla and uSwitch are somewhat unusual in the field of newspapers’ online operations, but the drop-off seems to mirror the broader slowdown in newspapers’ Web revenues. NYTCO, Tribune, Gannett and McClatchy all announced results showing online revenue growing at a lower rate than 2006, with percentage growth dropping by as much as half.

In a note to investors, Morgan Stanley analyst Lisa Monaco observed of Scripps specifically: “It looks like quite a meltdown in the interactive segments.”

TeenPeople.com was all that remained of the once-vaunted magazine brand after the print edition closed in 2006. At the time, executives vowed the magazine would live on in its Web incarnation. But with its closing, Time Inc. decided that even the Web presence wasn’t profitable enough.

When the first announcement of a Web-only publication was made, it elicited skepticism from Samir Husni, a professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi, better known as Mr. Magazine. “The beauty of the Web is it gives magazine publishers the excuse ‘we’re not killing the thing, we’re staying on the Web.’ If magazines could survive on the Web, don’t you think Playboy would have folded its print edition long ago?” he asks.

Citing the TeenPeople.com demise, Husni says he believes that a print pub’s move to online-only is the kiss of death. “It may not happen all of sudden–some survive longer. But sooner or later, they will die.”

TeenPeople.com’s Web traffic fell 50% from 435,000 in March 2006 to 218,000 in March 2007.

While the economics of online publication might be superficially attractive, the competition is greater. As challenging as maintaining a print publication may be, Husni noted on his blog, it’s still a must for magazine brands. “The Web is a great place to be, but it is not print and should not replicate the print editions of the magazines.”

The demise of TeenPeople, at one time sold on every newsstand in America, may have troubling implications for other magazines that have shifted to online-only status. So far in 2007, Premiere and Child have moved to online-only, while 2006 saw, among others, ElleGirl and FHM migrate to the Web.

“Clear Channel Radio gets access to an entirely new group of advertisers within a new and complementary sales channel, and Google adds another option for its existing customers,” Clear Channel Radio CEO John Hogan said in a joint statement released with Google late Sunday.

The 675-plus stations represent the core properties, which Clear Channel will retain after completing a previous plan to sell about 450 stations in smaller markets. As such, they offer some of the highest quality radio ad inventory available–a critical gain for Google. That inventory should be a boon to Google’s plan to expand from online search and contextual advertising into traditional media, including radio, print and TV advertising.

Google already owns radio advertising sales rep, Dmarc, and recently struck a TV advertising deal with direct satellite TV operator EchoStar.