The New York Times reported yesterday that Gannett is rolling out a new marketing tool that will allow companies to place banner ads on newspaper websites owned by them allowing users to click on a banner ad and see a virtual version of the weekly circular that usually comes in the print version of the paper. They have signed up 10 of the nations top 50 advertisers.

I for one, think this is a great idea. I really like to look through these advertisements each week, but since I don’t have a paper subscription myself, I usually rely on my mom bringing me the advertisements each Sunday. I know that I can go to places like www.Meijer.com or www.Kohls.com and view these circulars online, but that takes a lot of effort and time that I don’t have. If I were reading my news online (which is really the only way I get my news) and I was reading the Business section and a banner ad showed up for Office Depot’s weekly circular I would be pretty prone to click on it to see what was on sale that week. This is just another way that the internet is becoming more localized. The article states that local internet advertising is expected to grow 26% this year. I wonder when this technology will be rolled out by people like Val-Pak and Save to use as a local online advertising tool for the smaller companies that use them for advertising. This seems to be the logical next step to me.