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No Free Ads at Willamette Week

Paper Adds Surcharge for Website Piggybacking.

By Patrick Sullivan
july 21, 1999  11:50 am
Weary of advertisers including in their copy an Internet address for someone else's business?

It's called "piggybacking," and if you try it at Willamette Week, you'll pay extra for your ad.

Russ Martineau, vice president of sales & marketing, explains: "We had a situation where this company -- let's call it 'Meals.com' -- made a deal with restaurants that advertise with us to include [the Meals.com] Internet address in the ad. It's a partial barter system. In return the restaurant gets placement on the Internet site."

Willamette Week will put a 30% surcharge on any ad that includes a third-party URL. However, the fee will be waived for frequent advertisers -- CitySearch, for example.

"There are all these e-commerce companies scrambling for free marketing," said Martineau. "Yahoo! is the king of them all. And there's nothing wrong with taking advantage of things like free e-mail.

"But not at our expense."
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