National Advertisers Can Now Reach, Engage Most Coveted Business Buyers via Integrated ACBJ Marketing Platform

NEW YORK, June 28 /PRNewswire/ -- American City Business Journals today announced an integrated, solutions-based marketing services platform delivering the country's most coveted business audience – the $1.8 trillion small- and mid-sized business market. Available through a newly created national marketing services organization, the platform will enable chief marketing officers, brand managers and media planners to most accurately target, reach and engage business decision makers at the local level.

Operating as The Business Journals, the platform spans the company's print, online, mobile and live-event properties, and will be augmented in the coming months by additional properties, including CityBizNetwork, a digital network of more than 100 business-to-business sites. Included at launch are publications in 64 DMAs represented by the City Business Journals Network; ACBJ's digital network of 42 bizjournals.com Web sites; its national business site, Portfolio.com; a growing stable of mobile apps; and more than 700 local business events a year. To support the launch, the company has combined the national sales teams of its Bizjournals and City Business Journal Network units.

Advertisers already benefiting from the integrated platform include ADP, American Express, Best Buy, Cisco, Cornell University Johnson School, Grainger, HSBC, Regus, and Unum.

ACBJ has long been the country's leading media company focused on the $1.8 trillion small- and mid-sized business market.

"Our strong ties to owners and executives at small- and mid-sized companies have made us the trusted source of locally focused information about the cities where they do business," said ACBJ CEO Whitney Shaw. "Through The Business Journals, we'll leverage these relationships to help national marketers connect directly across multiple platforms with the business executives who are, in many cases, leading the country's rebound from recent economic challenges."

Delivering a Coveted and Hard-to-Reach Audience

The platform solves a challenging problem for marketing executives, brand managers and media planners responsible for connecting national companies with local executives.

"Marketers have told us that finding a way to fully engage this audience is a significant challenge," said Mike Olivieri, Chief Revenue Officer of ACBJ.  "So The Business Journals will stand alone in delivering virtually every engagement point, alongside trusted content in properties with which they have deep, long-term relationships. Now national marketers can fully engage these fragmented, hard to find, and difficult to reach executives running small- and mid-sized companies, who spend trillions of dollars every year."

Fewer than 16 percent of ACBJ's total audience consumes competing business media.

Editorial excellence is one of the primary drivers of that loyalty, added Olivieri. To date this year, ACBJ properties have won more than 100 editorial awards for work published in 2009.  Its Puget Sound Business Journal was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, widely recognized as the most prestigious award in journalism, and ACBJ papers won 12 awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, surpassed only by the New York Times' 13 awards.

Additional Platforms to be Added

One of the first additional platforms to launch will be CityBizNetwork, bringing together for the first time in a digital marketing network both local business media and local business and professional sites. Some of the business and professional sites have never before offered national marketers direct access to their audiences. The network will include the sites of all of ACBJ's weekly business journals, as well as those of partner publishers.

"The local business sites we've approached to be charter members quickly embraced the value of having a single digital network that delivers local B2B demographics on a scale significant for national marketers," said Tim Bradbury, president of new media for ACBJ. "We're launching with an audience size that's unprecedented for a B2B property."

In all, ACBJ expects CityBizNetwork to launch with an audience of more than 15 million business professionals in more than 70 DMAs.

About American City Business Journals

American City Business Journals engages 13.5 million decision makers each month through the company's 40 newsweeklies, 42 Web sites, digital newsletters and more than 400 local events across the country. It is the largest publisher of business-to-business information in the United States. More than 4 million readers each week engage with exclusive, in-depth coverage of local business communities; some 9 million unique monthly users engage with the company's digital content; more than 11 million e-newsletters are delivered each month via email; and the company sees more  than 1 million mobile page views each month. American City is a unit of Advance Publications Inc., which also operates Conde Nast Magazines, Parade magazine, Fairchild Publications, the Golf Digest companies, Newhouse Newspapers and cable television interests.

SOURCE American City Business Journals