In these heady times when anyone can be a journalist, there will be more opportunities for Canadians – and Canadian advertisers – to reach hyper-local markets with the expansion of US-based Examiner.com to Canada.

The citizen journalism-based news website, with an average of 22 million unique monthly visitors (Omniture) and 20,000 writers covering 162 US cities, today announced that five Canadian cities – Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver – have been added to its roster. Currently, there are three ad units of banner advertising available on the site’s Canadian city pages, and over 100 writers have been hired to cover national and local topics.   

In 2010, advertising opportunities will be expanded to include sponsorship of individual writers. Currently being test-driven in Denver, CO., the sponsorship package allows a local advertiser to be aligned with specific local writers and their audiences, with ad units on a chosen writer’s page and access to that writer about announcements or promotions, as well as sponsorship of search terms for that market, Rick Blair, CEO of Examiner.com, told MiC. When the sponsorship opportunities are brought to Canada, he added, they may differ slightly in detail but will follow the same general principle.

‘This gives the advertiser the opportunity to be connected with a community in a way that you can’t be when you’re just running banner ads,” Blair said, noting that the sponsorship in no way is meant to influence content on that writer’s site.

Advertising opportunities are also now available on Vancouver-based NowPublic.com, a user-generated local news site with an average of four to five million unique monthly visitors (Omniture) that Examiner.com acquired in September. Previously NowPublic did not host advertising at all but now three ad units are now available that can be geo-targeted, based on user IP addresses, to local markets.

www.examiner.com
www.nowpublic.com