Crikey reported yesterday that News Ltd and Fairfax are believed to be in secret talks to merge their recruitment websites CareerOne and MyCareer to compete with Seek. Based on site traffic, Seek dominates online employment advertising in Australia. This is in part due to features on their site and in part due to poor competition by Fairfax and News over the seven or eight years Seek has been in business. Early on they refused to carry Seek advertising as they were (possibly) in denial about the online opportunity. More recently, they have allowed their commitment to print revenue to treat their online employment plays as the poor cousin. That has clearly changed this year with both sites improving offerings, but not value for the advertiser.
If the Crikey report turns out to be true, News and Fairfax will need to go to market with a new offering which leapfrogs that from Seek. They will also need to turn their back on print employment advertising. That decision, if taken, will have a knock on effect through their newspapers – more so at Fairfax than News since white collar employment positions seem to be advertised more online than blue collar.
As one who has advertised more than thirty positions online, mainly at Seek, in the last five years I would hope that any renewed competition among the big players in the online space would result in a pricing model based on the cost of providing the service and not based on what they can get away with as at present. Seek, CareerOne and MyCareer charge too much for employment ads and do so because they can get away with it. This is what comes with cozy competition. Having said that, I’d expect the ACCC to reject a proposed joint venture between News and Fairfax.
As readers here would know, I am preparing to play in this space with Find It and online classified website. But we’ll be small – tiny, in fact. But we will be independent, visitor driven and offer points of difference and value propositions which we expect will resonate with advertisers and consumers. Our pricing will not be arrogant. Our key point of difference will be our newsagent connection. Newsagents are signing agreements to represent Find It at a great rate. This will give us an engaged local sales force to promote our offering and demonstrate the local focus of search. Newsagents like the idea of connecting with online advertising and are pleased to earn not only through commission but also profit share.