URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT

1198 of 1258 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
January 23, 2007 Tuesday

Late Edition - Final

Europe Encouraging Clean Energy Industry
BYLINE: By JAMES KANTER
SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 1446 words
DATELINE: PARIS
The cloudy Welsh coast may seem an odd choice for making solar panels, especially for a bigwig like Robert M. Hertzberg, a Californian who has hobnobbed with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. But a commitment by European governments to helping out ''clean energy'' entrepreneurs is creating a more welcoming environment than America, where erratic support, a lackluster market for taking companies public, along with more onerous financial rules, have given pause to some start-ups and investors.

''California does have this great image,'' said Mr. Hertzberg, a former speaker of the California State Assembly and the co-founder of an investment firm, Renewable Capital. ''But Europe still is much greener than anywhere in the United States, by several orders of magnitude.''

Besides, said Mr. Hertzberg, his thin and flexible solar panels even work in overcast conditions. ''Hey, don't you get it? It works in the rain!'' he likes to tell the Welsh.

Europe is experiencing a new wave of interest in ventures that develop energy from less polluting or renewable sources, like sun and wind, as well as from tides, agriculture and geothermal heat. It is not clear, though, if the interest will turn into a passing fad or a bubble, like the rush into Internet stocks during the late 1990s.

The United States has not signed on to the Kyoto Protocol, an international accord aimed at stabilizing emissions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Even so, North American industry has set the investment pace, pouring $3.5 billion of private equity and venture capital money into start-up clean-energy developers in 2006, according to New Energy Finance, a research firm based in London.

Europe has signed the Kyoto Protocol, but private equity and venture capital investment into clean energy has been smaller there than in the United States over the last two years. Together, Europe, the Middle East and Africa have raised only about one-third as much as the United States for new clean energy ventures, according to New Energy Finance.

But Ken Bruder, the executive director of New Energy Finance, warned that those numbers were an unreliable guide to the overall development over the sector. He said that ready access to green-minded consumers and long-term government support would do more to create fertile territory for generating profits.

''Setting up power lines to reach wind and solar farms is a major task and not accomplished overnight,'' Mr. Bruder said. ''Europe may be doing a better job than America in setting up these new infrastructures.''

Another incentive in Europe for clean energy companies is lighter regulation over publicly listed companies. More than half of the world's 22 most valuable publicly traded wind and solar companies are based in Europe, according to the Jefferies Group, an investment bank based in New York.

Among the most prominent firms to have emerged in Europe is Vestas, a Danish company supplying turbines that generate 35 percent of the electricity worldwide that comes from wind power.

But Vestas lost 192 million euros in 2005, or $252 million at current exchange rates, on 3.6 billion euros in sales, partly because of weak results in North America.

Rebates on wind power have lapsed several times in the United States, creating what Soren Madsen, a Vestas sales executive, called ''wild swings in demand.''

Vestas has forecast improved profit margins for 2007, and its shares rose about 130 percent in 2006 -- a sign that the drive for clean energy and alternatives to oil is pushing up valuations.

Apax Partners, a buyout firm based in London, multiplied its initial investment of 11.5 million euros by 27 times when it sold most of its stake in the German solar company Q-Cells between October 2005 and January 2006. Such success is helping to motivate small incubator funds in Europe, like Mr. Hertzberg's, to compete with the cash-rich venture capital firms and giant utilities to find and finance renewable energy ventures and start-ups.

Years ago, raising large amounts of money for scalable renewable energy sources was more a concept than a practice, even as governments publicly sought to curb global warming, secure new supplies of energy and still meet rising demand.

But last year, clean-energy companies raised about $4.4 billion on European stock markets, about four times the amount raised in stock markets in North America, according to New Energy Finance.

High government taxes have forced Europeans for a long while to pay more than Americans for their energy, and the search for cheaper energy sources has helped spur research and development in competing wind and solar technologies, particularly after an oil embargo by Arab countries prompted oil shortages starting in late 1973.

In response, research and development in European countries like Denmark ramped up substantially beginning in the mid-1970s. Investors also have welcomed moves by large utilities to expand into renewable energy.

Shares of EDF Energies Nouvelles, a renewable energy company half-owned by the French power giant Electricite de France, were more than 30 times oversubscribed during an offering in November. The stock rose 18 percent on the first day of trading.

The European Union has imposed mandatory caps on pollution generated by carbon dioxide emitting industries, such as coal-fired electricity generators, helping to create openings for new kinds of energy companies. Many European governments also back the use of new technologies with generous subsidies. In Germany, for example, consumers who sell renewable energy, like solar power to the central electricity grid, are offered highly attractive tariffs. That helps consumers pay back the cost of buying expensive new equipment like solar cells.

Countries like Britain, France and Norway also encourage renewable energies, with incentives to switch to low-carbon-emitting alternatives.

''You can't really make a comparison with the United States,'' said Mark Kerr, the director of the oil, gas and power team at 3i, a buyout firm based in London. ''There is a huge amount of public and government support for renewable energy across Europe.''

Mr. Kerr said 3i had invested about 100 million euros over the last 12 months in Gamesa, a Spanish company that services wind turbines, and Electrawinds, a Belgian company operating wind farms, along with other ventures, including a plant in Ostend that turns animal fats into electricity. All those projects, Mr. Kerr said, would continue to depend directly and indirectly on subsidies for profits in coming years.

As for Mr. Hertzberg, he did not come to Wales for the subsidies -- at least not directly.

But he credits the commitment of European governments to renewable energy for making the region a more promising place to whip up investor interest in his latest venture, called G24i.

''Kyoto here is the real thing,'' he said. ''The financial markets and those who control the big funds understand the importance of renewable energy.''

Mr. Hertzberg chose a site near Cardiff, the Welsh capital, partly because it is within easy reach of the burgeoning community of bankers and financiers in London who cover markets for trading emissions credits and who closely track companies involved in clean technologies.

Eventually, Mr. Hertzberg wants to list G24i on a stock exchange like the London Stock Exchange's AIM, which has become a hub for renewable energy companies.

To jump-start sales, he plans to sell inexpensive devices in poor regions of Africa and India, bundled with his solar panels that could charge a cellphone or power a light bulb.

Mr. Hertzberg declined to say how soon G24i would be profitable -- a reminder that many renewable energy businesses will have to prove that their business models work.

He sold his stake in that company in late 2003, before his run for mayor of Los Angeles in 2005, in which he was narrowly defeated in the primary. Shares of Solar Integrated Technologies, a Los Angeles-based company co-founded by Mr. Hertzberg that makes roofing systems containing solar cells, have lost about 78 percent of their value since the company was listed on the AIM in May 2004.

In fact, only 4 out of 30 clean energy stocks on the AIM have a history of profitability, and the stocks are highly volatile, according to Simon Gottelier, an investment manager at Impax Asset Management in London.

''There is question over whether there is a bubble, or has been a bubble,'' said Jens Lapinski, an analyst at Library House, a research firm in Cambridge, England. ''All the venture capital houses in London still are asking themselves, 'Is this the big new thing?' ''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: SOLAR ENERGY (92%); RENEWABLE ENERGY (91%); ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT (90%); ENERGY & UTILITY SECTOR PERFORMANCE (90%); CLIMATE CHANGE (90%); ELECTRIC POWER PLANTS (89%); NATURAL GAS & ELECTRIC UTILITIES (89%); PRIVATE EQUITY (89%); VENTURE CAPITAL (89%); ENVIRONMENTAL TREATIES & AGREEMENTS (89%); AIR QUALITY REGULATION (89%); ELECTRIC POWER INDUSTRY (89%); TREATIES & AGREEMENTS (86%); EMISSIONS (77%); ELECTRICITY TRANSMISSION & DISTRIBUTION (77%); US STATE GOVERNMENT (77%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (77%); INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERINGS (76%); COMPANY PROFITS (76%); GEOTHERMAL ENERGY (72%); WIND ENERGY (72%); GREEN MARKET (72%); INTERNET & WWW (65%) Terms not available from NYTimes
COMPANY: JEFFERIES GROUP INC (50%)
TICKER: JEF (NYSE) (50%)
PERSON: ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (91%)
GEOGRAPHIC: LONDON, ENGLAND (79%) CALIFORNIA, USA (94%); NEW YORK, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (96%); UNITED KINGDOM (93%); WALES (93%); EUROPE (99%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); NORTH AMERICA (79%); ENGLAND (79%)
LOAD-DATE: January 23, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Robert M. Hertzberg, a former speaker of the California State Assembly, owns a company that makes solar panels and is based in Wales. (Photo by Richard Harbus for The International Herald Tribune)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

1199 of 1258 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
January 22, 2007 Monday

The New York Times on the Web

CAMPAIGN SPOTLIGHT: Trying Not to Be Roadkill on the Schuykill
BYLINE: By STUART ELLIOTT
SECTION: Section ; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg.
LENGTH: 1431 words
Remember the jingle "Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet"? A musical campaign for a new Web site offers a version that could be called "Phillies, cheese steaks, scrapple and all kinds of cars."

The campaign is for Phillycars.com, a Web site introduced on New Year's Eve by Philadelphia Media Holdings. That's the company led by the local entrepreneur Brian P. Tierney, which in June bought the Philadelphia properties that were formerly part of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain from their new owner, the McClatchy Company.

The Web site (phillycars.com) is intended to offer a Philadelphia-focused alternative to auto-shopping sites like Cars.com and Vehix.com. The campaign promotes the Web site as "brought to you by" its older siblings: The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com.

To underscore the connection, the automotive sections of the two newspapers have been renamed Phillycars and the 250 dealerships taking part in Phillycars.com also get free ads in those sections.

The campaign, with a budget estimated at more than $1 million, is wide-ranging, including television and radio commercials, the Internet, outdoor ads and of course, space in The Inquirer and The Daily News.

The campaign is being created by Gyro Worldwide, a Philadelphia agency known for its offbeat, energetic campaigns for advertisers like Chupa Chups, William Grant & Sons, MTV and R.J. Reynolds. Gyro also sells its own line of merchandise, under the Sailor Jerry brand name, sometimes in partnership with marketers like Converse.

The campaign for Phillycars.com is indicative of attempts to play up the ability of online media to be targeted more narrowly than their mainstream, traditional counterparts. That benefits marketers seeking to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their pitches by placing them only before consumers who find the ads relevant.

Research shows that although the public frustration with advertising deemed intrusive is increasing, people say they actually welcome ads selling what they really want.

So the goal of the campaign is to establish Phillycars.com "as the local car-buying site with thousands of cars, a broad array of choices throughout the Delaware Valley," says Ed Mahlman, chief marketing officer at Philadelphia Media Holdings.

"We're saying: 'This is the perfect site for you. Don't search for the perfect car only to find it's in Butte, Montana,'" Mr. Mahlman says.

That's a reference to the national nature of Web sites like Cars.com, part of Classified Ventures, which is owned by media companies like Belo, Gannett and Tribune.

The Philadelphia newspapers worked with Cars.com when they were owned by Knight Ridder. Mr. Tierney, who is chief executive at Philadelphia Media Holdings, says he ended the arrangement because "we wanted to create our own proprietary brand" in conjunction with the local car dealers.

The creation of Phillycars.com came not long after Mr. Tierney withdrew from CareerBuilder, the job-search Web site owned by Gannett, McClatchy and Tribune, and formed an alliance with Monster Worldwide, the operator of the rival Monster.com service. The new allies started a co-branded Web site (philly.com/monster) in the first such agreement between Monster.com and the owner of big-city newspapers.

The elements of the campaign meant to remind computer users of the local aspects of Phillycars.com are laid on as thick as the icing on the Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpets sold by Philadelphia's own Tasty Baking Company.

For instance, the TV and radio commercials feature a song, "Philadelphia," by a local singer, Kevin Michael, signed to a local label, Downtown Records. The TV spots are styled like music videos clips, intercutting scenes of Mr. Michael performing with local sights like the Schuykill Expressway and the streets of Center City, as Philadelphians call their downtown.

The commercials also show signs for roadways like the Pennsylvania Turnpike and neighborhoods like Chestnut Hill as well as mock vanity license plates.

The radio commercials are humorous, with actors playing residents of local neighborhoods and suburbs. They offer fanciful testimonials about how Phillycars.com helped them find the dream cars you might not expect they wanted.

For example, in one radio spot, a "soccer mom" from the Main Line Philadelphia suburbs describes her dream car as a Hummer H2. "Out of my way, sucka," she exclaims.

In another radio commercial, a man declares: "I'm from King of Prussia, and they call me Big Ed, and that's not ironic. I just found a Mini on Phillycars.com, and that's ironic."

Humor is also a big part of the print and outdoor versions of the campaign, which present dozens of imaginative Web addresses. (Most are fakes, but some will actually link the extremely curious to phillycars.com.)

For instance, ads appearing in the movie pages of The Inquirer and The Daily News direct computer users to "http://www.phillycars.com/twothumbswayup" and "http://www.phillycars.com/perfectforchasescenes."

There are ads in the sports section with the words "tailgate in style" after the slash and ads in the music section with the words "cars with great stereos" after the slash.

The outdoor ads, in the same mock-U.R.L. style, are more direct. Ads on the backs of buses describe Phillycars.com as "easier than the bus" and "the express to finding a new car locally." Billboards on highways use drivers to "give up that clunker" and "commute better."

Gyro Worldwide was familiar to Mr. Tierney because for many years he competed against the agency: He ran Philadelphia shops like Tierney Communications before leaving the industry and subsequently forming Philadelphia Media Holdings.

"When he got the papers, we were hoping we'd get a phone call from him," says Steven Grasse, chief executive at Gyro.

When the call came, "we discussed a project about trying to get new readers, young people not reading the papers," he adds, "then he had a more immediate need, Phillycars.com."

Even so, the Phillycars.com campaign has a youthful feel because "people who buy cars online tend to be younger," Mr. Grasse says. "I think we're talking to a new generation of car buyers," he adds, so the ads are infused with "personality and vitality."

Mr. Michael's song is perfect for the campaign, Mr. Grasse says, because "it's vibrant" and all about "'hometown hip, hip hooray' and Philly pride."

He found the song, he adds, when executives he knew from Downtown Records "came to us and said: 'We have an artist who has this song, "Philadelphia." What can you do with it?'"

In a neat bit of synergy, the cover art that Gyro designed for Downtown Records for the CD single release of "Philadelphia" depicts the word in the same typeface as it appears in the logo of The Inquirer.

Mr. Grasse says he would like to "use the song as the theme song for the entire Philly.com Web site, not just for Phillycars."

There are also plans, he adds, for Mr. Michael to perform on behalf of Phillycars.com, The Inquirer and The Daily News at the Philadelphia International Auto Show, scheduled for Feb. 3 to 11 at the Philadelphia Convention Center.

Mr. Tierney says he is pleased with the results of the campaign so far. For instance, in the first week, he says, 1,400 leads from visitors to Phillycars.com have been sent to car dealers that are participating in the Web site.

Phillycars.com has been averaging 28,500 page views a day, Mr. Tierney says, compared with 15,000 a day last January when the deal with Cars.com was still in effect.

"And it's spilling over to Philly.com," he adds, citing figures showing almost 9.5 million page views from Jan. 1 through 9 this year compared with 6.4 million in that period last year.

Since Mr. Tierney took over, he has outlined ambitious plans to increase circulation and advertising revenue, in part by significantly stepping up marketing efforts. Recent layoffs at The Inquirer and The Daily News were attributed to a need to offset a steep decline in ad revenue, which Mr. Tierney said had not been expected.

For example, Mr. Tierney says, ads that ran before Christmas promoted buying subscriptions to the Sunday edition of The Inquirer as holiday gifts.

And the company spent about $1.2 million in the fall on a campaign promoting the new deal with Monster.com, he adds, which included "putting the Monster logo on the sides of our 450 trucks."

-----

If you like In Advertising, be sure to read the Advertising column that appears Monday through Friday in the Business Day section of The New York Times newspaper.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: WEB SITES (90%); NEWSPAPER PUBLISHING (89%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING (89%); HOLDING COMPANIES (89%); MUSIC INDUSTRY (78%); BROADCAST ADVERTISING (78%); ONLINE CONTENT & INFORMATION SERVICES (78%); INTERNET & WWW (78%); NEW CAR DEALERS (74%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (71%); BRANDING (70%); OUTDOOR ADVERTISING (69%); RADIO ADVERTISING (67%); BASEBALL (89%) Terms not available from NYTimes
COMPANY: PHILADELPHIA BOURSE INC (92%); MCCLATCHY CO (83%); WILLIAM GRANT & SONS LTD (54%)
ORGANIZATION: PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES (84%)
TICKER: MNI (NYSE) (83%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS312140 DISTILLERIES (54%); SIC2085 DISTILLED & BLENDED LIQUORS (54%)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (52%)
GEOGRAPHIC: PHILADELPHIA, PA, USA (90%) PENNSYLVANIA, USA (90%); MONTANA, USA (51%) UNITED STATES (90%)
LOAD-DATE: January 23, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: TV and radio commercials for Phillycars.com feature a song, "Philadelphia," by a local singer, Kevin Michael, signed to a local label, Downtown Records.

The homepage of Phillycars.com.

The TV spots are styled like music videos clips, intercutting scenes of Kevin Michael performing with local sights like the Schuykill Expressway.
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

1200 of 1258 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
January 22, 2007 Monday

The New York Times on the Web

CAMPAIGN SPOTLIGHT: Trying Not to Be Roadkill on the Schuylkill
BYLINE: By STUART ELLIOTT
SECTION: Section ; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg.
LENGTH: 1432 words
Remember the jingle "Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet"? A musical campaign for a new Web site offers a version that could be called "Phillies, cheese steaks, scrapple and all kinds of cars."

The campaign is for Phillycars.com, a Web site introduced on New Year's Eve by Philadelphia Media Holdings. That's the company led by the local entrepreneur Brian P. Tierney, which in June bought the Philadelphia properties that were formerly part of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain from their new owner, the McClatchy Company.

The Web site (phillycars.com) is intended to offer a Philadelphia-focused alternative to auto-shopping sites like Cars.com and Vehix.com. The campaign promotes the Web site as "brought to you by" its older siblings: The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com.

To underscore the connection, the automotive sections of the two newspapers have been renamed Phillycars and the 250 dealerships taking part in Phillycars.com also get free ads in those sections.

The campaign, with a budget estimated at more than $1 million, is wide-ranging, including television and radio commercials, the Internet, outdoor ads and of course, space in The Inquirer and The Daily News.

The campaign is being created by Gyro Worldwide, a Philadelphia agency known for its offbeat, energetic campaigns for advertisers like Chupa Chups, William Grant & Sons, MTV and R.J. Reynolds. Gyro also sells its own line of merchandise, under the Sailor Jerry brand name, sometimes in partnership with marketers like Converse.

The campaign for Phillycars.com is indicative of attempts to play up the ability of online media to be targeted more narrowly than their mainstream, traditional counterparts. That benefits marketers seeking to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their pitches by placing them only before consumers who find the ads relevant.

Research shows that although the public frustration with advertising deemed intrusive is increasing, people say they actually welcome ads selling what they really want.

So the goal of the campaign is to establish Phillycars.com "as the local car-buying site with thousands of cars, a broad array of choices throughout the Delaware Valley," says Ed Mahlman, chief marketing officer at Philadelphia Media Holdings.

"We're saying: 'This is the perfect site for you. Don't search for the perfect car only to find it's in Butte, Montana,'" Mr. Mahlman says.

That's a reference to the national nature of Web sites like Cars.com, part of Classified Ventures, which is owned by media companies like Belo, Gannett and Tribune.

The Philadelphia newspapers worked with Cars.com when they were owned by Knight Ridder. Mr. Tierney, who is chief executive at Philadelphia Media Holdings, says he ended the arrangement because "we wanted to create our own proprietary brand" in conjunction with the local car dealers.

The creation of Phillycars.com came not long after Mr. Tierney withdrew from CareerBuilder, the job-search Web site owned by Gannett, McClatchy and Tribune, and formed an alliance with Monster Worldwide, the operator of the rival Monster.com service. The new allies started a co-branded Web site (philly.com/monster) in the first such agreement between Monster.com and the owner of big-city newspapers.

The elements of the campaign meant to remind computer users of the local aspects of Phillycars.com are laid on as thick as the icing on the Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpets sold by Philadelphia's own Tasty Baking Company.

For instance, the TV and radio commercials feature a song, "Philadelphia," by a local singer, Kevin Michael, signed to a local label, Downtown Records. The TV spots are styled like music videos clips, intercutting scenes of Mr. Michael performing with local sights like the Schuylkill Expressway and the streets of Center City, as Philadelphians call their downtown.

The commercials also show signs for roadways like the Pennsylvania Turnpike and neighborhoods like Chestnut Hill as well as mock vanity license plates.

The radio commercials are humorous, with actors playing residents of local neighborhoods and suburbs. They offer fanciful testimonials about how Phillycars.com helped them find the dream cars you might not expect they wanted.

For example, in one radio spot, a "soccer mom" from the Main Line Philadelphia suburbs describes her dream car as a Hummer H2. "Out of my way, sucka," she exclaims.

In another radio commercial, a man declares: "I'm from King of Prussia, and they call me Big Ed, and that's not ironic. I just found a Mini on Phillycars.com, and that's ironic."

Humor is also a big part of the print and outdoor versions of the campaign, which present dozens of imaginative Web addresses. (Most are fakes, but some will actually link the extremely curious to phillycars.com.)

For instance, ads appearing in the movie pages of The Inquirer and The Daily News direct computer users to "http://www.phillycars.com/twothumbswayup" and "http://www.phillycars.com/perfectforchasescenes."

There are ads in the sports section with the words "tailgate in style" after the slash and ads in the music section with the words "cars with great stereos" after the slash.

The outdoor ads, in the same mock-U.R.L. style, are more direct. Ads on the backs of buses describe Phillycars.com as "easier than the bus" and "the express to finding a new car locally." Billboards on highways use drivers to "give up that clunker" and "commute better."

Gyro Worldwide was familiar to Mr. Tierney because for many years he competed against the agency: He ran Philadelphia shops like Tierney Communications before leaving the industry and subsequently forming Philadelphia Media Holdings.

"When he got the papers, we were hoping we'd get a phone call from him," says Steven Grasse, chief executive at Gyro.

When the call came, "we discussed a project about trying to get new readers, young people not reading the papers," he adds, "then he had a more immediate need, Phillycars.com."

Even so, the Phillycars.com campaign has a youthful feel because "people who buy cars online tend to be younger," Mr. Grasse says. "I think we're talking to a new generation of car buyers," he adds, so the ads are infused with "personality and vitality."

Mr. Michael's song is perfect for the campaign, Mr. Grasse says, because "it's vibrant" and all about "'hometown hip, hip hooray' and Philly pride."

He found the song, he adds, when executives he knew from Downtown Records "came to us and said: 'We have an artist who has this song, "Philadelphia." What can you do with it?'"

In a neat bit of synergy, the cover art that Gyro designed for Downtown Records for the CD single release of "Philadelphia" depicts the word in the same typeface as it appears in the logo of The Inquirer.

Mr. Grasse says he would like to "use the song as the theme song for the entire Philly.com Web site, not just for Phillycars."

There are also plans, he adds, for Mr. Michael to perform on behalf of Phillycars.com, The Inquirer and The Daily News at the Philadelphia International Auto Show, scheduled for Feb. 3 to 11 at the Philadelphia Convention Center.

Mr. Tierney says he is pleased with the results of the campaign so far. For instance, in the first week, he says, 1,400 leads from visitors to Phillycars.com have been sent to car dealers that are participating in the Web site.

Phillycars.com has been averaging 28,500 page views a day, Mr. Tierney says, compared with 15,000 a day last January when the deal with Cars.com was still in effect.

"And it's spilling over to Philly.com," he adds, citing figures showing almost 9.5 million page views from Jan. 1 through 9 this year compared with 6.4 million in that period last year.

Since Mr. Tierney took over, he has outlined ambitious plans to increase circulation and advertising revenue, in part by significantly stepping up marketing efforts. Recent layoffs at The Inquirer and The Daily News were attributed to a need to offset a steep decline in ad revenue, which Mr. Tierney said had not been expected.

For example, Mr. Tierney says, ads that ran before Christmas promoted buying subscriptions to the Sunday edition of The Inquirer as holiday gifts.

And the company spent about $1.2 million in the fall on a campaign promoting the new deal with Monster.com, he adds, which included "putting the Monster logo on the sides of our 450 trucks."

-----

If you like In Advertising, be sure to read the Advertising column that appears Monday through Friday in the Business Day section of The New York Times newspaper.

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