July 15, 2015

Here is my mid-year update, which is a bit longer than usual, but I hope the additional context will be
helpful as we accelerate a number of strategic initiatives in the second half of 2015.
First and foremost, in the third full year of Advance Local’s digitally focused transformation, we continue
to make excellent progress growing our digital audience and revenue and launching new digital businesses. We are
executing well on our overall strategy despite our biggest challenge - which is a steeper decline in newspaper
advertising than what we had budgeted for. We are not alone in absorbing print revenue losses from some of our
largest clients, many of whom are cutting their newspaper ad budgets and investing heavily in digital marketing. The
proverbial “silver lining” here is that as more of our readers and advertisers transition to digital platforms and
products, we are better positioned than ever to meet their diverse needs.
The keys to our long-term success remain the same:


Invest aggressively in our digital growth – including doubling down on our mobile, video, audience
targeting, content marketing and database marketing efforts that are scaling nicely.



Leverage our collective assets and skills to build new digital audiences. We’ll do this by expanding into
new geographies where we have not historically had newspapers – and by pursuing new vertical audience
opportunities focused on consumer interests and passions.



Look for additional efficiencies to reduce non-core expenses. Like every major media and technology
company, we’ll have to make tough choices on where to invest and where to cut expenses in order to give
our digital ramp the longest runway possible over the next few years. Our Advance Central Services
colleagues, locally and nationally, are doing exemplary work in these critical areas and constantly helping
us examine our various cost structures.



Strengthen our training, career development and recruiting programs to ensure we remain an employer of
choice.

We have come a long way in the last three years. We have the most talented teams in every city in which
we operate – and the largest, most engaged audiences in every community we serve. The road ahead will not be easy
– and our organizational evolution will never stop -- but we have taken important steps toward building a powerful
enterprise while securing our long-term future.
Nevertheless, we still have a long way to go. Our local sales teams need to get more comfortable asking for
and ultimately selling larger digital packages to prospects of all sizes. Our business-to-business sales initiatives,
while growing well in terms of year-over-year percentage growth, are a fraction of what they should be. While our
mobile and video ad revenue gains have also been stellar in terms of year-over-year percentage growth, they should
be increasing at a much faster rate given our level of investment. And we need to look throughout our organization
for opportunities to save money on unproductive expenses in order to reinvest these dollars in new digital products
with the potential for substantial growth.
Fortunately, a wide array of achievements this year has given us a great deal of momentum.
In terms of readership, our audience growth has been outstanding. Advance Local sites have enjoyed a 34percent year-over-year increase in unique visitors so far in 2015, according to comScore. Alabama Media Group has
led the way with a nearly 70-percent increase. We now reach nearly 46 million unique visitors each month. Overall,
our websites rank No. 8 nationally among comScore’s general news sites, and share the Top 10 with Yahoo News,
NBC News, CNN and USA Today.
Most importantly, our reporters and editors are combining unmatched, real-time local reporting with new,
innovative approaches to increasing audience engagement. And readers have responded in ever-increasing numbers.

 Our stories on the gay marriage controversy in Alabama this winter drew more than 3.2 million page views to
AL.com, while recent live coverage of tornadoes across Michigan drew a new one-day record of 6.2 million page
views to MLive.com. Our focus on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Periscope has paid off and referrals
from social media have grown by 131 percent so far in 2015.
Our dedicated journalists continue to produce trusted, high-quality work and have been honored hundreds
of times over in the first half of 2015 with national, regional and state awards.
Alabama Media Group received widespread recognition for its probe into Alabama prisons, including the
first-ever national award for community engagement from the Associated Press Media Editors, a regional award for
editorial writing from the Society of Professional Journalists and profiles in both the Columbia Journalism Review
and IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors) Journal. “Orange is the New Black” author Piper Kerman called their
work “great reporting from the home of America’s most notoriously abusive women’s prison.”
NOLA Media Group received a second straight Edward R. Murrow Award and a top national IRE award
for its ongoing “Louisiana Purchased” investigation of campaign finance. NJ Advance Media and the Oregonian
Media Group received four regional Emmys between them, a testament to their commitment to compelling video
storytelling.
And our writers and editors continue to dominate every state journalism competition. For example, MLive
Media Group received 31 first-place and 94 total awards from the Michigan Associated Press Media Editors –
including top honors for two newspapers, The Ann Arbor News and Jackson Citizen Patriot.
Here is a small sample of impressive investigative reporting and public service journalism from our
newsrooms:
-- MLive Media Group’s investigation of Michigan’s dangerously low vaccination rate
-- NOLA Media Group’s initiative “The Future of New Orleans,” leading a community conversation 10
years after Hurricane Katrina
-- NJ Advance Media’s extensive reporting on NJ Governor Chris Christie and Bridgegate
-- PA Media Group’s examination of outrageous state pensions
-- The Staten Island Advance’s analysis of serious shortfalls in special education
-- The Syracuse Media Group’s series on Syracuse University’s basketball sanctions
Our local sales teams are also doing well, capitalizing on our tremendous audience growth and unrivaled
portfolio of advertising products and marketing services developed by Advance Digital.
We’re selling bigger deals with greater frequency and broadening our base of non-search revenue to drive
digital growth.
Recent six-figure sales include:
One of the largest cities in New Jersey worked with NJ Advance Media and Advance Digital to deploy our
digital assets to rebrand itself as a hip business and residential alternative to Manhattan.
A national retail chain partnered with Alabama Media Group to beef up its e-commerce efforts with a
multifaceted content marketing campaign that extended into other Advance Local markets.
And the MLive Media Group sold our single-biggest digital program ever by showing executives at a
valued client how they could reach their target market more effectively with digital than they were with television.
In other promising news, we’re seeing surging demand for video advertising and are on track to do $25
million of video sales this year. While this number is still relatively small, it should grow exponentially as our local
television competition continues to weaken.
We have new audience targeting capabilities, featuring higher-performing mobile and video inventory, new
partnerships with Facebook and YouTube and more engaging interactive ad units.
We rolled out a new content marketing platform to handle our burgeoning native advertising program.
Since the launch of Nativo in the last 60 days, we have sold over 500 campaigns totaling $2 million in sales. The
new 'Headline Studio' in-house agency is working with our biggest clients to create large, customized content
marketing programs. We were named Microsoft Advertising Digital Partner of the Year for the third year in a row.

 And our Consumer Insight team continues its great work creating new value from all the targetable and marketable
audience segments and related data we generate from our various businesses.
Last but not least, thanks to the product delivery team at Advance Digital, we have several projects
underway designed to refine the way readers can access the news and information they need. To mention just a few:
-- Mobile Upgrades: Our mobile experience has benefited from a number of improvements, including
mobile-optimized headlines, more flexibility in featuring stories and easier sharing tools for our readers.
-- Video: We have made it possible for every one of our journalists to create compelling video content on
their mobile device and then upload that content directly to our sites in real time.
-- Content targeting: Our utilization of entity extraction to automatically identify and tag people, places
and things now allows us to better connect the stories we tell with the readers who are most interested in those
topics. This also allows us to develop rich first-party audience data that will provide more business opportunities.
-- High school sports: Substantial upgrades to our High School Sports Network have enhanced user
personalization and made it much easier to share scores and stats on this popular platform.
So that’s a summertime snapshot of where we are right now. Lots of progress, lots to accomplish and
improve upon, and plenty to acknowledge and be thankful for. As always, I look forward to your feedback and ideas
as we move forward.
Thanks again for all your hard work!

Randy Siegel