Belo Interactive, the Internet subsidiary of Belo Corp., announced that DallasNews.com achieved improvements in consumer response both online and offline through targeted advertising campaigns for a local automotive dealer.

According to the company, DallasNews.com, the web site of The Dallas Morning News, worked with a local dealer to increase awareness of the dealership and its inventory among consumers.

In addition to providing contextual advertising within the automotive section of DallasNews.com, targeted banners were also delivered to customers who had visited the automotive section within the past 30 days. These ads were served whenever visitors returned to DallasNews.com even if they were outside the automotive area, says the company.

By using TACODA Systems' Audience Management System targeting capabilities to reach visitors whose prior actions suggested a keen interest in the advertiser's message, DallasNews.com created new ad inventory outside of the automotive classified section. The response rate among the target audience was 7.7 percent as compared to the national average of .33 percent, representing an improvement of 2200 percent, according to the company.

The company added that in addition to increasing the advertiser's reach and the campaign's effectiveness, audience-targeted ads doubled the number of credit applications the dealership received, and increased the number of online searches by 17 percent. Furthermore, the dealership reported that the DallasNews.com campaign generated 44 percent of the total calls into the dealership at a time when eight promotions were running in other media.

"While contextual placement has always worked well for us, audience targeting gives us the ability to reach local, ready to buy, car shoppers who are browsing in non-automotive sections of DallasNews.com," said Eric Christensen, vice president and general manager of Belo Interactive. "The results prove that if you deliver truly relevant ad messages, online consumers will respond. Our ability to target an advertisers' message directly to a specified consumer audience dramatically increases the effectiveness of every advertising dollar."

About Belo Interactive

Belo Interactive is the Internet subsidiary of Dallas-based Belo Corp., a media company with a diversified group of market-leading television, newspaper, cable and interactive media assets. A Fortune 1000 company with approximately 7,800 employees, Belo operates news and information franchises in markets and regions including Texas, the Northwest, the Southwest, Rhode Island, and the Mid-Atlantic region. Belo owns 19 television stations (six in the top 16 markets) reaching 13.7 percent of U.S. television households; owns or operates six cable news channels; and manages one television station through a local marketing agreement. Belo publishes four daily newspapers: The Dallas Morning News, The Providence Journal, The Press- Enterprise (Riverside, CA) and the Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, TX). Belo Interactive's new media businesses include 34 Web sites, several interactive alliances, and a broad range of Internet-based products. Additional information is available online at www.belointeractive.com.