Butting is currently director of AdSence Online at Google Europe. His assignment goes along with Holtzbrinck’s initiated Internet-oriented policy and strengthens the company’s management in the digital field.

Chairman of the board, Stefan von Holtzbrinck comments: “I’m pleased that we have won Johann Butting, a proven Internet expert. With his international background and experience in fields like traffic generation and monetization, he will become an important asset and continue the success of the company’s Internet heavyweights including Parship, the VZ networks, Myhammer, Myphotobook, Gutefrage.net, etc.

“More intimate cooperation is to create synergies in the fields of IT and technology”, von Holtzbrinck adds. He also hopes that the new management structure will promote growth opportunities abroad.

Luis Ferreira returns to Controlinveste as head of the commercial department after a three year absence at competitor Cofina S.A. (newspaper Correio da Manhã, classifieds portal Classificados CM), where he was head of the holdings advertising department.

At Controlinveste Ferreira is responsible for the commercial development of the print and online activities of the newspapers Diário de Notícias, Jornal de Notícias, sports paper O Jogo and news-radio broadcaster TSF.

Ferreira had been commercial director for the now-defunct free newspaper Global Notícias.

Interestingly, in November, Controlinveste had erased this post from its company structure, after João Carlos Jorge resigned from the job.

Meios e Publicidade also reports that Hugo José Correira Pires is leaving the Controlinveste executive board. Correia Pires served as executive director responsible for the commercial area of all newspapers and magazines at Controlinveste Media.

In the classifieds area, Controlinveste  recently launched a new portal, named Tuti.pt, like the newspapers general classifieds supplement. Controlinveste is also the publisher of Portugal’s only printed classifieds paper, Ocasião.

In June, the company closed operations on its tabloid newspaper 24 Horas and free daily Global Notícias, for cost-reduction motives. Owner Joaquim de Oliveira is also shareholder (2.17 percent) at Portuguese telecommunication company Portugal Telecom (PT), which operates the more successful Portuguese classifieds portals Sapo.pt. Controlinveste is not stock listed and does therefore not publish financials.

There are many simultaneous sessions and a few  keynotes but I’ll primarily be in the sales and marketing or social media sessions, as that’s what our media-industry clients need to hear about.  First up is Jared Hamilton of Driving Sales ,talking about Aggressive Search and Social Strategies for Proven ROI.

AutoTrader.com’s CEO Chip Perry speaks at the noon luncheon sponsored by his firm. His topic: Automotive Advertising: Embracing the Internet as an Influencing Medium.

Representing the non-profit  Television Bureau of Advertising, Scott Roskowski will discuss Automotive Marketing and Media today.

AskPatty.com’s Jody DeVere talks about Marketing to Women on a Zero Budget. That’s at 2pm.

There’s lots more – a jam-packed day and early evening, for sure. More later.

Jim Townsend

It’s Craigslist’s own editorial statement about all the heat it’s taken in recent months over prostitution ads. While it’s hard to read a lot of meaning into a single word, when you take it in context of blogs written by CEO Jim Buckmaster — and to a lesser degree, statements from founder Craig Newmark — the word suggests that Craigslist is taking the position that it took the ads down with objection, presumably pressured by its critics: law officers, politicians, human-rights groups, media and moralists. Craigslist hasn’t said whether the ads are gone for good or whether they’re on hiatus.

The “censored” label evidently only applies to U.S.-based browsers. Users outside the U.S. can troll for American hookers to their heart’s content –- presumably until that content expires at the end of the week. Craigslist removed the category from its ad-posting section. The irony isn’t lost on us. Last month, EBay-owned LoQuo.com blocked all browsers outside Spain from seeing its graphic adult ads after Craigslist raised a stink about them.

And Craigslist still supports adult-services listings in other countries, although it doesn’t charge for them. (The Polaris Project, a group that combats human trafficking, today called on Craigslist to shut down overseas access.)

Buckmaster and Newmark are entitled to make any statement they want, of course. Or none at all. What that single word means to me: It smacks of typical Buckmaster — uncommunicative, obstinate and petulant. Let him have his sulk. He’ll get over it and get back to what he’s good at: growing the business.

Newmark and Buckmaster, well mostly Buckmaster, took the very narrow position that they weren’t doing anything wrong and were abiding by the “will” of the communities they served. Very narrowly true on both counts. Under the U.S. Communications Decency Act, Craigslist is not liable for messages posted by others that suggest criminal enterprise. The fact that the activity flourished at all suggests that at least some members of Craigslist’s “communities” desired it.

Craigslist’s attempt to control those messages to mollify law enforcers was doomed to fail. The CDA also holds that as soon as you start editing other people’s content, you lose your “common-carrier” protection and, in effect, become a “publisher,” which doesn’t enjoy the same protection under the law.

I suspect that the decision to take down the ads was more Newmark’s doing, even though he contends Buckmaster makes all the business decisions. Newmark was clearly embarrassed by the endless replays of CNN’s interview of him -– an interview he and Buckmaster later characterized as an ambush even though he consented to it. That might have had a little to do with it. More likely, I think, was Newmark’s realization that it’s really awkward being a media darling one minute and a media pariah the next. But I don’t suspect his motives. Newmark is a good guy involved in a lot of good works -– works that can’t afford to be tarnished by the bad business of prostitution advertising. I also think Buckmaster, who’s been fiercely loyal to Newmark, saw the squeeze his friend was in, and relented.

At the end of the day, it’s simply better business for Craigslist to give up adult advertising — and to keep prostitution ads from infesting other categories. (The ads  have already. Hookers are posting in the free “casual encounters” personals, and in the paid “therapeutic services” section.)

Craigslist’s distant competitors -– notably, EBay Classifieds -– have been building their reputations on being a safer place for sellers and consumers. If Craigslist wants to maintain its comfortable marketplace dominance, it should concentrate its resources on improving trust and safety.

Even if Craigslist doesn’t make that investment –- it can afford it -– Craigslist, Newmark and Buckmaster will survive this day.

In the meantime, media, bloggers, pundits and others (besides us) are weighing in, many pondering the First Amendment effects of Craigslist’s decision:

•  Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, writing for The Washington Post, contends that policing adult ads should have not been Craigslist’s responsibility: “Policing should be left to the police and not be the responsibility of companies that don’t have either the resources or the expertise to do the task.”

• Danah Boyd, a senior Microsoft researcher, wrote on the Huffington Post under the headline, “How Censoring Craigslist Helps Pimps, Child Traffickers and Other Abusive Scumbags” -– which sums up her treatise: “… a one-stop-shop is more helpful for law enforcement than for criminals. In short, Craigslist is not a pimp, but a public perch from which law enforcement can watch without being seen.”

Craigslist has made that argument in the past. So have some of us at the AIM Group.

•  Writing for ZDNet, Christopher Dawson pondered whether it was a business decision or a First Amendment issue: “While the Digital Millenium Copyright Act protects sites from liability over the actions of its users, stepping into the territory of child-sex trafficking suddenly gives the DMCA (and the First Amendment) less teeth. No matter what legal protections it may or may not have had, what growing, profitable company wants to be at the forefront of a high-profile non-consensual sex trade case? (No, there isn’t a case like that yet involving Craigslist, but perhaps it was only a matter of time).”

•  Jolie O’Dell, writing for Mashable.com, polled readers to find that 71 percent of them felt that Craigslist’s adult ads should not be censored for a variety of reasons. Almost half of those who were against censorship said they thought prostitution shouldn’t be illegal in the first place. Of the 29 percent who favored censorship, two-thirds objected because they felt Craigslist was profiting indirectly from prostitution.

•  Writing for Wired, Evan Hansen pointed out that other sites and services haven’t been subject to the same level of scrutiny as Craigslist: “… it seems politicians are making the pioneering, 15-year-old service an opportunistic scapegoat. Internet services may accelerate and exacerbate some social problems like prostitution, but they rarely cause them. The root of these issues — and their solutions — lie in the realm of public policy, not websites and ham-handed website filtering.”

•  William Saletan on Slate wrote, “… by getting out of the way, [Craigslist is] challenging human-trafficking activists and state attorneys general to shift their scrutiny to other sites that host such ads.”

•  And then there’s this from the Fox News affiliate in Las Vegas: “Sindi Star, an adult film actress who would scour Craigslist for jobs or post looking for work, said she is unhappy with the website’s decision to shut down the section.  ‘I don’t believe Craigslist has ever hurt anybody itself,’ she said.”

Yes. And no.

We’re betting that this weekend’s stunt, placing a “censored” banner where the adult-services section was in the United States, will become permanent — even if Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster and founder Craig Newmark didn’t intend to terminate the prostitutes’ advertising hangout forever.

Peter M. Zollman

It would take an astonishing level of stupidity, and a good bit of risk, for Craigslist to reopen the adult-services section. And while it was projected to generate almost $45 million this year, the simple fact is that Craigslist’s two individual owners (Newmark and Buckmaster), and its corporate owner (EBay), don’t need the money. Reopening the section would generate an intense and immediate backlash from law enforcement officials, members of Congress, and the non-profit groups that have fought to close Craigslist’s prostitution section.

But as soon as Craigslist eliminated the “adult services” section, postings seemed to increase in its “casual encounters” section (based on a very limited review by the AIM Group). And the sexual overtones of those postings seemed even more blatant than before.

Consider:

— Even before Craigslist had an “erotic services” category, the precursor to its adult services category, lots of ads in the personals section and the casual encounters section were obvious solicitations for prostitution. With the adult-services category gone, Craigslist will most probably see immediate growth in personals and casual encounters, which don’t require credit cards, phone numbers or other identifying information from the people who post the ads. (“Adult services” ads required a valid phone number and a credit card for posting, making it easier to track the people who placed the ads.)

— Several members of Congress, most notably Rep. Jackie Speier, a Democrat whose district includes San Francisco, have proposed hearings to determine if additional action should be taken to shut down the sex ads on Craigslist. Speier issued a statement after Craigslist closed adult services, saying, “The section is down but not forgotten. We can’t forget the victims, we can’t rest easy. Child sex trafficking continues and lawmakers need to fight future machinations of Internet-driven sites that peddle children.”

— Other sites, especially Backpage.com, operated by Village Voice Media, are likely to benefit substantially from the shutdown of adult services on Craigslist. We recently researched Backpage / Village Voice Media’s version of adult services, and estimated its revenue for 2010 at $17.5 million in that category. Of course, that was before Craigslist closed its adult-services section. Bet on significant growth in that number — and a new spotlight on Village Voice Media as the leading purveyor of prostitution ads now that Craigslist’s section is gone. Backpage ads are far more graphic and blatantly oriented to prostitution than the ads ever were on Craigslist. (We’ve called Village Voice Media for a comment; so far, no comment — but we just asked a few minutes ago.)

— Prostitution won’t go away, nor will child trafficking. The irony of Craigslist’s adult-services section was that although it provided an open marketplace for prostitution and other illegal activity, it also provided a convenient central location for law enforcement officials to find people who were engaging in those illegal activities. And those officers universally agreed that Craigslist was extremely cooperative whenever there was a legal issue involiving advertising on Craigslist. Now that it’s gone, …

— Sites like MyRedBook.com (San Francisco Bay area) and LVFever.com (Las Vegas) are open services for promotion of prostitution. There’s no pretense or obfuscation by the advertisers on the sites. They’ll probably grow, as well, as Craigslist users find other places for their illegal activities.  One police officer quoted by the Contra Costa Times, in the East Bay area just outside San Francisco, called MyRedBook “a huge vehicle for online prostitution. … Our guys work that one and even the back of newspapers. I’m sure they’ll be happy Craigslist is getting rid of these ads, but I’m not sure how much difference it’ll make.”

Already, Valleywag, a site based in Silicon Valley, has offered “Your post-Craigslist guide to buying sex online.” So, the purveyors of prostitution won’t go down for long.

The AIM Group, which has tracked Craigslist’s revenue since 2003, reported in late April that the company was expected to generate $36.3 million in adult-services revenue, triple the revenue it generated with adult services in 2009.

However, research completed last week showed a substantial increase.

In our snapshot — which is based on extremely conservative methodology — the volume of adult-services ads was up almost 9 percent from February, when our previous research was conducted. Using the same methodology, we now projected revenues of $44.4 million across all of Craigslist’s U.S. markets.

“While it’s not clear whether Craigslist has made a decision to eliminate its adult-services ads temporarily or permanently, it’s clear the site’s revenue was growing exponentially ,” said Peter M. Zollman, founding principal of the AIM Group (formally known as the Advanced Interactive Media Group LLC), which is based in Altamonte Springs, Florida.

“Because of the shutdown, the site may not generate the $44.4 million in adult-services revenue that we estimated just last week.”

The new revenue estimate was prepared on behalf of a private foundation that fights against child prostitution as one of its key goals. The foundation engaged the AIM Group to research revenue among numerous sites in the U.S. that carry ads from prostitutes. The data were scheduled for release on Sept. 14, but the foundation and the AIM Group agreed to release them early because of the decision by Craigslist to replace its adult-services category with a “censored” banner. (See our earlier coverage of that decision here.)

Village Voice Media, publisher of Backpage.com and 14 alternative weeklies throughout the United States, generates an estimated $17.5 million in ads for escorts and adult services, the AIM Group reported.

“While Craigslist generates the most revenue by far in ‘adult services,’ it’s not the only site. Craigslist has drawn a great deal of attention for its adult services ads, but Village Voice Media and a number of other sites and media companies also carry similar ads,” said Zollman. “In fact, the ads on Backpage.com are considerably more graphic and explicit than Craigslist ads, and the photos they carry are definitely not suitable for children — or most adults, either.”

The research into Craigslist’s and Village Voice Media’s adult-services revenue, which was conducted in August, was funded by a private foundation that has asked not to be identified at this time, in part because it does not want to seem to be taking credit for the Craigslist decision nor promoting other adult-services advertising media.

“We have closely tracked Craigslist’s revenue for eight years,” said Zollman. “Our estimates have grown from about $7 million in 2003 to $122 million in 2010. While the bulk of the company’s revenue comes from recruitment advertising, the adult-services category was about one-third of its projected revenue this year.”

*    *    *    *

(Here’s a link to our earlier news release about Craigslist’s revenue in 2010: http://aimgroup.com/blog/2010/04/30/craigslist-revenue-profits-soar/ )

          The space on Craigslist where “adult services” was has been replaced by a black bar with the word “censored.”

          There’s no word yet on whether “adult services” — ads placed for and by prostitutes — are gone forever, or just for now. Craigslist has not posted any comments to its blog, and spokeswoman Susan MacTavish Best isn’t answering her phone nor e-mails. Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster and namesake Craig Newmark haven’t responded to e-mails, either.

          Our last published revenue estimate for Craigslist’s adult services section was that the company would take in $36 million this year. However, we’ve recently updated that research and found that the revenue for prostitution ads has increased substantially during the last six months.

          Craigslist has come under strong pressure from a wide variety of sources, including state attorneys general, the Boston Globe and a number of organizations to eliminate the sex ads.

          Village Voice Media, which publishes alternative weeklies and Backpage.com, takes in millions of dollars annually from its prostitution ads — which are much more graphic and salacious than the ads on Craigslist.

           We’ve written literally dozens — maybe hundreds — of articles about the Craigslist adult-services, and previously “erotic services,” section. Just search our site for more coverage.

A five-year Daily Herald veteran, Bolyard used to direct business consulting and online revenue for Morris Communications’ 27 daily newspaper websites.

She serves on Paddock’s Yahoo Newspaper Consortium, a collaboration she helped bring about.

“Jeff’s achievements and keen focus on emerging media technologies and platforms as well as his proven abilities to effectively monetize those opportunities makes him the ideal talent for this important role,” CNP President and CEO Steve Rossi told the San Jose Mercury News.

CNP, whose majority owner is MediaNews Group, publishes the Mercury News, Contra Costa Times and Oakland Tribune.  In total, it publishes 34 dailies and 50 weeklies.

Target Media Partners was formed in April 1998 with the spin-off of the non-Los Angeles area publications of Recycler Classifieds, concurrent with the acquisition of Recycler Classifieds by The Times Mirror Company (now Tribune Company).

Target Media’s original start-up capital was provided by Times Mirror. In 2000, Target Media bought out Times Mirror’s investment.

The new listings include unit details, photos, floor plans and contact information for the property managers.

With two million of Zillow’s 12 million monthly visitors now apartment dwellers this is a smart move for both companies. Now Zillow ups its rental listing numbers to 150,000.

Zillow mobile will provide access to all the listings as well. So far two million consumers have downloaded the socially-enabled mobile app.

“Zillow offers an unmatched user experience for home shoppers who are renting, deciding whether to rent or buy, or shopping for a home to buy. This partnership deepens Zillow’s footprint in the rental search industry, and gives Zillow users access to a new category of managed apartment rental listings,” said Chloe Harford, Zillow’s VP of mortgages and new ventures, in the announcement.

With plans to go public in 2011, this is but the latest in a series of ramp-ups and collaborations that include introduction of IPad capability, collaboration with RedFin for real estate loan quotes, and a team-up with Yahoo Real Estate to take on the industry giant, Realtor.com

“Our new partnership with Zillow is extending our reach to renters,” said Kevin Doyle, SVP and GM of Apartments.com, in the announcement.  “By creating easy and convenient access to our listings, Apartments.com is able to drive highly qualified apartment shoppers to the leasing offices of our advertisers through unmatched exposure.”

A former AP reporter and Pulitzer finalist who worked in Rome, Beirut, Libya, India, Ethiopia and Bulgaria, Miller was also city editor at the Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader before becoming executive editor at the Centre Daily Times (State College, Pa.) and then SVP  of the Tallahassee (FL) Democrat.

Miller succeeds Geordie Wilson.