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GateHouse President & COO Kirk Davis Wins Borrell’s 2013 Innovator Award

Tuesday, 12 February 2013 12:58

Kirk Davis

President & COO
GateHouse Media, Inc.

WILLIAMSBURG, VA (Feb. 12, 2013) – Borrell Associates today announced that Kirk Davis, president and COO of GateHouse Media, will be the recipient of its 2013 Award of Merit for outstanding leadership and innovation in local media. The award will be presented on March 5 at Borrell’s 2013 Local Online Advertising Conference at the Grand Hyatt in New York City.

“Among all this year’s nominees, Kirk Davis stood out in an exceptional way,” said Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates. “He’s provided leadership in such a way that I don’t think we’ll be calling GateHouse a ‘newspaper’ company much longer. With the creation of Propel Marketing, he’s taken his company out of the ‘disrupted’ column and is making GateHouse a disruptor.”

“I'm honored to share this award with our leadership team and employees,” Davis said. “I'm grateful for the amazing job they do and for this truly humbling recognition." He said he feels privileged to work for a company that “embraces the thrill and challenge of innovation, and to work with a group of executives who are incredibly talented, but also passionate about the opportunity at hand.”

Davis joins top local media executives from Fisher Communications, Deseret Media and CBS Local who have been past recipients of the innovator’s award. Borrell pores through dozens of nominees and issues the award annually to an executive who’s taken an innovative path to help a local media company in its digital transformation.

“What a bold move to start a new business unit with a separate brand, staff and structure and hire 100 FTEs,” said Nancy Lane, president of the Local Media Association, who put Davis’ name in nomination. “He’s a gutsy, bold leader who’s deserving of this honor.”

Davis is a longtime media executive who has served as publisher of newspapers in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and California. He was named president and COO of GateHouse Media in January 2009, GateHouse is one of the largest publishers of locally based print and online media in the United States as measured by its 78 daily publications, 261 weekly newspapers, 92 shoppers, 6 yellow page directories and more than 400 locally focused websites and mobile sites. GateHouse Media currently serves local audiences of more than 10 million per week across 21 states. The company's business model is to be the preeminent provider of local content and advertising in the small and midsize markets it serves.

Last year, GateHouse launched Propel Marketing (www.propelmarketing.com), a local online marketing company providing digital solutions to small and medium sized businesses. GateHouse Media also launched Adhance Media, a private ad exchange that brings together media companies who are looking to maximize revenue from excess ad inventory.

For more information on the awards or Borrell Associates, visit www.borrellassociates.com or call 757.221-6641.

ABOUT BORRELL ASSOCIATES INC.

Borrell Associates Inc. is a research firm that tracks local advertising and helps media companies develop executive strategies. It works with more than 1,200 local media companies throughout North America and publishes regular analyses of major advertising trends and conduct sales training for clients. The company is headquartered in Williamsburg, Va.

ABOUT GATEHOUSE MEDIA

GateHouse Media's business model is to be the preeminent provider of local content and advertising in the small and midsize markets we serve. Our portfolio of products, which includes 431 community publications and more than 405 related websites and six yellow page directories, serves over 299,000 business advertising accounts and reaches approximately 10 million people on a weekly basis.

ABOUT KIRK DAVIS

After spending his first 8 years in publishing as a circulation and marketing executive, Kirk served as publisher from 1990-1996 with dailies located in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and California. In 1996, Kirk was recruited by Fidelity Capital (now Devonshire Investors), a subsidiary of Fidelity Investments, to become president of their TAB newspaper group in the Boston area, which was part of Community Newspaper Company (CNC). He was later named president of CNC in 1998, as the company grew to 113 daily, weekly and specialty publications, along with its townonline.com community web sites serving Eastern Massachusetts towns.

In 2004, Kirk was named CEO of Boston-based Enterprise NewsMedia (ENM), a multimedia company owned by Heritage Partners, Inc., a private equity firm in Boston, MA. While there, he developed a go-to-market community web platform to serve Southeastern Massachusetts towns under the domain Wicked Local.

GateHouse Media, Inc. (GateHouse Media), based in Fairport, NY, acquired both Enterprise NewsMedia from Heritage Partners and Community Newspaper Company (CNC) from Herald Media in 2006 and named Kirk as CEO of GateHouse Media New England.

In January 2009, Kirk was promoted to President and COO of GateHouse Media. GateHouse Media is one of the largest publishers of locally based print and online media in the United States as measured by its 78 daily publications, 261 weekly newspapers 92 shoppers, 6 yellow page directories and over 400 locally focused websites and mobile sites. GateHouse Media currently serves local audiences of more than 10 million per week across 21 states. The company's business model is to be the preeminent provider of local content and advertising in the small and midsize markets it serves.

Last year, GateHouse Media launched Propel Marketing (www.propelmarketing.com). Propel Marketing is a local online marketing company providing digital solutions to small and medium sized businesses.GateHouse Media also brought to market Adhance Media. Adhance Mediais a private ad exchange that brings together media companies who are looking to maximize revenue from excess ad inventory. Adhance brings together a community of premium, hyper-local sites, representing quality demographic and geographic targeting ability to national brands. This results in higher revenue that typically would not be available through other remnant programs.

Kirk attended Wright State University and Ohio University. He is past chairman of the board for the Suburban Newspapers of America (SNA) and currently serves on the board of the Association for Audited Media (AAM, formerly ABC). AAM is a forum of the world’s leading magazine, newspaper and digital publishers, advertisers and advertising agencies.

Wednesday, 05 September 2012 09:25

Digital Marketing Regions – a New Geography for Local Digital Ad Spending

Newspaper, TV and radio managers use geographical market designations that were designed for their media – NDMs, DMAs and Arbitron markets. But local websites don’t fit in those old boxes; they need a market designation that is geared to the practical realities of local digital ad sales.

Borrell Associates has defined 513 Digital Marketing Regions – DMRs – to fill this need. Each DMR is based on a core county that has high digital marketing expenditures and spreads out to include lower-spending adjacent counties.

Click on the link to see local online ad spending in your DMR, and let us know what you think.

[Read the press release] [See the map]

WILLIAMSBURG, VA (Sept. 6, 2012) – Borrell Associates has announced the formation of a new media industry geography called Digital Marketing Regions (DMRs), identifying 513 U.S. markets where local businesses concentrate their digital advertising expenditures. Local ad spending levels for any DMR – as well as for any U.S. county – can now be seen for free by visiting Borrell’s website.

DMRs range in size from Los Angeles, with an estimated $813 million being spent by local businesses this year, to Carlock, South Dakota, with $310,000. Although the average DMR includes six counties and has $36 million in locally spent digital advertising, the median DMR has $10.6 million in online ad spending. In one-third of the DMRs, local businesses are spending less than $5 million. Each of the nation’s 3,033 counties falls within one of the regions. The average DMR includes six counties.

DMRs

“Digital media has been around for 20 years without its own unique market geography, so this is overdue,” said Kip Cassino, executive vice president at Borrell. “TV has its Designated Marketing Areas. Radio has its Arbitron markets. Other media use MSAs, CBSAs or a collection of counties to gauge business and consumer engagement. The DMR is uniquely for digital marketing, and especially for those trying to understand what’s happening locally.”

Local businesses in the U.S. will spend $18.7 billion on digital advertising this year, up 21% from 2011. Borrell issued a client memo earlier this week forecasting 30% growth in 2013, to $24.4 billion. By next year, for the first time in history, digital media will hold greatest share of local advertising budgets, knocking out the longtime leader, local newspapers. Digital media will control 25% the $96 billion local advertising marketplace, while newspapers will control the second-highest share at 18.6%.

Borrell developed the DMRs with the help of its client base of more than 1,100 local media companies. The regions were selected by a formula that identifies a core county where digital marketing expenditures to reach local consumers is high, then spans out to draw geographic boundaries where expenditures taper off or “hit a wall” from another market’s expenditures. For a deeper explanation of the methodology, visit the Borrell Associates website at www.borrellassociates.com.

The DMRs share interesting characteristics. Many are bounded by a river or a mountain range, indicating that easy access to stores is at least one part of the equation in drawing the lines. DMRs get larger in sparsely populated areas because shoppers in these rural areas must travel farther to shop than their urban cousins.

“The distance consumers are willing to drive to make certain purchases – to visit a shopping mall or buy a car, for example – is pivotal to the physical size of DMRs,” Cassino said. “These geographies become larger as the ratio of local online ad spending in the ‘core’ county to any surrounding county grows,” he said.

Borrell has posted an interactive map displaying each of the 513 DMRs, along with the counties included and the level of local online advertising in each market. It can be viewed at www.borrellassociates.com/dmr. Visitors to the site can also view online advertising for any U.S. market by county, by Core Business Statistical Area (CBSA), by Television Market Area (TMA), or by state.

Borrell is also offering a free webinar on Thursday, Sept. 13, to unveil the DMRs and answer questions. To sign up for the webinar, visit www.borrellassociates.com.

For more information, contact Borrell Associates at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call 757-221-6641.

[See the map]

View the interactive map!

Click to login and view the full map with DMR, CBSA, county, and TMA data.

View interactive map with DMR option only

Click here to go to the map showing how the DMRs are broken out across the U.S., and access top-line data on online ad spending. No login or registration is required.

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