Classifieds aggregator site launches in UK

A new website that hoovers up two million classified adverts from newspaper websites around the UK claims it is helping to boost the flagging market.

US-based Oodle crawls the web for adverts placed on a variety of publishers' sites and offers them to users through a single gateway.

A British version of the site launched last week, taking adverts from the likes of Times Online, Loot, Fish4Jobs and eBay.

Newspaper proprietors on both sides of the Atlantic have attempted to diversify their classified advertising base from print alone in recent years as free or niche online advertising services gain popularity.

But, while Oodle removes the necessity for readers to find adverts by going through newspaper homepages, CEO Craig Donato denied the site would kick at the kneecaps of publishers' virgin online ad offerings.

"The online classifieds market in the UK is very progressive and in many ways much more evolved than in the US," he told journalism.co.uk. "As such, it's the first market we decided to expand into.

"Our goal is to partner with folks who represent sellers. So we only display summaries that link directly to the full listings on the publishers' sites.

"We feel we are helping the overall classifieds market by making the experience less painful and more attractive for buyers, which clearly benefits those in the business of selling classifieds advertising."

Oodle crawls advertising sections for local titles in 30 UK cities as well as national publications. Users can set alerts to be emailed about new deals posted by any of the partner sites.

Mr Donato said online classifieds present a "huge opportunity" to newspapers that have good local brands and accounts with local advertisers.

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