Tinseltown in Da Sphere: Welcoming our latest partner, LA Times

Today, we are psyched to announce the first fruits of a project that began last fall with a conversation that sprouted from an interview on NPR-WNYC.  Six months after that interview, we partnered with Tribune to power contextual content syndication on their 10 news sites – LA Times, Chicago Tribune, RedEye, Baltimore Sun, New York Newsday, Florida Sun Sentinel, Orlando Sentinel, Hartford Courant, Allentown Morning Call and Hampton Roads Daily Press.  Barely one month later, after a beautiful collaboration between Sphere and Tribune’s LA Team, Sphere is now powering related content on every LA Times article, as you can see in the below example (clickable).

Along with recirculating related LA Times content on each article, we’ve also created custom indices for the LA Times of both their favorite LA blogs and local news sources as well as a custom “around the web” index of sites with whom they’ve chosen to share traffic.  Both are innovative ways to use Sphere’s technology to a publisher’s advantage.  We’ve also integrated a 468×60 IAB ad unit beneath the content in this module, creating a seamless and integrated experience.  This excites me because we’ve learned that when content and advertising are married in an effective and natural way, performance of both improve.

This is the first of several Tribune sites to launch with Sphere, so we have our work cut out for us, but a special thanks goes to Ron Parsons and his team at Tribune for driving this project from the very beginning.  On Sphere’s side, Troy, Kevin, Adam and, as always, Martin get the credit for making the magic happen and making the rest of us look good:)