The new CEO of Dow Jones, Richard Zannino, promises he’ll oversee a restructuring that will involve the integration of print and online sales operations at the company.
“One alternative would be to organize around customers and market segments or to organize, for example, around WSJ as a franchise. Either would involve more integration for print and online,” Zannino told ClickZ News. “Advertisers could be expecting us to be approaching them not just with a print offering and with an online offering, but with a cross-media offering.”
Zannino, who had been executive vice president and chief operating officer, takes the reins at Dow Jones in February, after Peter Kann relinquishes the role. Also leaving the company is Karen Elliot House, SVP of Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journal, who had been widely seen as a potential successor to Kann. House and Kann are married.
Rather than integrate the print and online sales forces into one, Zannino said the two teams would be trained on selling across both media. The company expects to accomplish this “by training, by developing joint advertising packages, by having a joint rate card, and by putting incentives in place to encourage those reps to sell both,” he said.
About a year ago, Dow Jones brought together sales operations from MarketWatch and the Wall Street Journal, after it acquired the former site.
Another upcoming change in Dow Jones’ electronic offerings may be more vertically-oriented sites. Earlier this week, the company launched a law page and legal blog as part of the Wall Street Journal Online, in an effort to better serve that audience and endemic advertisers. The company already offers free sites on real estate and careers, and Zannino says more vertical offerings are in the works, though he wouldn’t go into specifics.
“We’re testing a number of ideas and the ones that test best will launch,” said Zannino, adding that these launches will occur sometime in the first six months of 2006.