Eight companies have come together as a joint venture and have acquired Find n Save, a search engine focused on discount offers made by merchants all across the country, according to the original report in the San Francisco Chronicle. Find n Save is part of the larger purchase of Travidia, an online shopping service.

The initial owners of the effort include Gannett Co. and Cox Media Group. Other partners include Hearst, MediaNews Group, McClatchy Co. and the Washington Post Co.

• Media Ventures Group has named William Apfelbaum chairman. Apfelbaum was last seen serving as chairman at out-of-home advertiser Titan Worldwide, which he founded in 2001. Prior to that, Apfelbaum served as chairman and CEO of outdoor advertiser TDI, which was acquired by Westinghouse/CBS.

• MEC Canada has appointed Derek Bhopalsingh vice president and managing partner of MEC Interaction, the agency’s digital, search and direct marketing division. Previously, Bhopalsingh held the role of digital group director of strategy at OMD Canada, and before that he served as vice president of digital media at Aegia Media.

• Hank Summy has joined McCann Erickson as president of North America, while Patrick Lafferty moves up to chief operating officer of the region. Summy was last seen serving as managing director of SapientNitro’s New York-based Eastern Region.

• Jim Jones is coming to mobile app distribution and monetization network Tapjoy as vice president and general manager of sales. Jones was last seen serving as America’s regional vice president at Yahoo!. He joins several recent exec hires, including Chief Marketing Officer Peter Dille, Chief Financial Officer Al Wood and Vice President and General Manager, Asia-Pacific, Larry Berkin.

• Rajan Mohan is joining the Gannett Digital team as vice president and general manager of social commerce, taking charge of Gannett social discount service Deal Chicken. The 15-year digital media veteran previously was senior vice president and general manager of Local.com’s Owned & Operated business unit, and also did time at AOL as director of web search and local.

• Digital agency R/GA has named Tony Effik managing director of the global media and connections department. Effik hails from Publicis Modem, where he was most recently serving as senior vice president of strategy and analytics in the U.S. In addition, Mark Ferdman, the founder of Freedom + Partners and Firstborn Multimedia, has joined R/GA as a group account director for L’Oréal.

• WPP brand strategy and design consulting firm The Brand Union has appointed Jodi Sutherland group director of client services. Sutherland was last seen serving as director of strategy and business development at Kramer Design.

• Entertainment video platform VEVO has found its first editorial director: Jim Macnie, a veteran pop culture digital writer who spent the last decade as managing editor for VH1.com.

• Mobile social gaming firm ngmcoco has named Micheal Staskin chief marketing officer. Previously Staskin was vice president of marketing and communications at Milan-based gaming and lottery firm Sisal SpA, and also has experience as vice president of marketing for Mattel.

• Social advertising firm Compass Labs has promoted Kevin Weafer to the newly created role of vice president national sales director. Prior to joining Compass Labs, Weafer had served as vice president of Business Development at BzzAgent and Texterity, as well as senior vice president of sales and marketing for Access Media and president of Student.com.

• Social marketing agency Mr. Youth has given Christian Borges the newly created position of vice president of marketing communications. Most recently, Borges served as vice president of digital communications and publicity for agency Deep Focus. Mr. Youth also recently added Jeff Melton as director of analytics.

• After announcing a leave of absence on September 15, Gannett Chairman and CEO Craig Dubow has resigned due to health issues. Marjorie Magner, independent director and chair of the audit committee, has been named non-executive chairman of the board while Gracia C. Martore has been named president and chief executive officer and taken a seat on the board of directors.

• e-commerce personalization specialist Baynote has teamed up with crowd-sourcing offer-maker Crowd Factory to enable merchandisers to offer contextual flash deals, referral offers and group deals to consumers based on real-time buying intent across multiple channels.

• Email, mobile and social marketing software developer Emailvision has integrated its Campaign Commander product for email and mobile marketing with the Magento e-commerce platform.

• Now that Apple’s iOS 5 has taken unique device identifiers off the table, DigiDay’s Jack Marshall reports that mobile targeters are looking in the direction of device fingerprinting.

• Havas has opened multicultural-marketing agency Totality in New York City that will partner with other agencies in the Havas network, including Arnold Worldwide, Euro RSCG and MPG. The full-service agency, led by CEO Leo Olper and CCO Mauricio Galvan, will focus on ethnic and niche consumers, including the Hispanic, African-American and LGBT communities.

• U.K.-based mobile marketing agency agency Fetch Media has acquired British peer agency Lucidity Mobile, also picking up clients Carlsberg, Harrods, Vodafone and… the British government (well, the Office of Central Information).

• Location-based advertiser JiWire has tapped Steve Ricketts as its European Managing Director. While at Orange UK (now Everything Everywhere), Ricketts launched mobile advertising services, mobile payment systems and location-based services.

• Energy People Connect, an online community and communications consultancy for energy industry professionals, has launched a B2B advertising network to assist energy advertisers in developing targeted and efficient media planning across energy-related publishers.

• Cella Irvine has been named CEO of contextual advertising firm Vibrant Media. The 25-year veteran of digital media was last seen heading up the New York Times Company’s About Group, and the contextual advertising around About.com content. Prior to that, Irvine served as chief financial officer for Digitas, but even before she held executive positions at Hearst, Marsh and Prodigy. Known best for it’s in-text advertising solution, this year Vibrant has launched a contextual targeting product for display advertising as well as an on-site toolbar for delivering related social content.

• Tom Cox has been named vice president of corporate development at Gannett, taking over for the soon-retiring Dan Ehrman. Previously Cox was senior vice president/head of business development at MySpace, and prior to that was principal and co-founder of consulting firm Stratique Partners.

• Digital Agency R/GA has named Ivan Arbitam its new chief information officer. His 17 years in information technology include stints at Interbrand, BrandWizard, Draftfcb, Foote Cone & Belding New York and SixtyFoot Spider.

• Andrew Nicolaou will lead O2 Media’s client sales team and develop mobile marketing solutions as head of client strategy. Previously, Nicolaou spent three years at Microsoft Advertising as a creative media strategist. In addition, Alexandra Davies was brought over from Channel 4 to serve as O2 Media agency sales manager.

• Recently launched Metacafe Entertainment Network has brought on Jon Harrison as senior director of Midwest sales and Marisa Polin as regional sales manager for the NYC office. Harrison has previously held senior sales positions for Break Media, Fox Interactive Media and RollingStone.com, while Polin has served in media management positions at 360i Media and Media Com.

• Digital design agency Fjord announced that cofounder Mark Curtis is returning to the fold as chief client officer after a six-year tour of duty at Flirtomatic, a Fjord spinoff. Curtis previously co-founded CHBi with Fjord cofounder Mike Breeston in 1994, which was sold to Razorfish in 1998. Fjord Partner and Director Christian Lindholm recently contributed a byline to Adotas asking whether new Apple CEO Tim Cook had the “art of logic.”

Big Spaceship founder and CEO Michael Lebowitz has been named chair of the IAB Agency Advisory Board, succeeding McKinney Chairman and CEO Brad Brinegar, who has held the role since 2009.

• We’re only four weeks into the 2011-12 football season, but Gannett’s USA Today has teamed up with Facebook on the Super Bowl Ad Meter, which will appear across the social network and USA Today’s online properties. Super Bowl ad fans will be able to view, rank and share their favorite budget-busting corporate messages.

• Chartboost has launched a white-label platform that enables publishers with high-ranking mobile apps to sell interstitial inventory to other developers looking to raise awareness for their mobile apps. The relationships are managed through a dashboard that allows developers to control where their apps are being promoted or which apps are being promoted within their own apps. Creative is completely customizable and can be set up in minutes.

• Demand Media continues its transition to a premium content network with the refreshed Livestrong.com. The site — which boasts 4 million registered members and 22 million monthly U.S. visits by 10 million uniques — is separating content into gender-specific pools and customizing destinations based on the sex of the user. In addition, Livestrong.com has added personalized tools to engage members in reaching fitness goals as well as an advisory board filled with notable fitness names.

• Evolve Media Corp.’s SheKnows, a female-centric network of content sites, has relaunched style and relationship site LovingYou with a new magazine-style layout.

In addition to the nine Gannett broadcasters selling Yahoo! advertising inventory, all of Gannett’s 81 newspaper sites also sell Y’s advertising inventory and donate local content to be used on Yahoo’s many sites, including the homepage.

Through Yahoo!’s ATP platform, local advertisers working with Gannett can use Yahoo’s audience targeting tools — including geography, user demographics and interests — in buying inventory on Gannett sites, Yahoo sites and the sites of other publications using ATP.

Mobile tech company and publisher Myxer has named Camilo Kejner to the new position of executive vice president. Kejner previous served as executive vice president and chief operating officer at EMI Music International.

Debra Goetz has been vice president of marketing for Gannett. Previously Goetz served as vice president of integrated strategic marketing at NBCUniversal; before that, she served as vice president of corporate marketing at Univision Communications.

Location-based marketing company JiWire has appointed Trish Tarson to be its first UK agency sales manager. Tarson was last seen at Hi-Media, where she was responsible for selling across a portfolio of premium mobile and online publishers.

Santa Monica-based interactive agency BLITZ has named Tamer Kattan head of strategy, Wilson Yin senior creative director, Bobbie Boucher technology group director, Peter Brine group account director, and Amanda Lewis and Anne Butcher associate creative directors.

Intellectual property law firm Venable, which specializes in online marketing legal issues among other focuses, has a new IP Partner in Justin Pierce, former head of trademarks and brand protection for Sony Ericsson.

Switching over from R/GA, Tim Allen is joining Arnold Worldwide’s Boston office as vice president and creative director.

Ratha Grimes is joining TRAFFIQ as director of product development to be based in Seattle. In her 10 years in online advertising, Grimes has served stints at Google, Microsoft and Bluestreak.

Social platform Meebo has named Daniel Bernstein vice president and head of business development and emerging revenue. Bernstein previously worked in client services at Bite Communications.

Video advertising management platform VINDICO has named Jes Santoro senior vice president of sales. Previously Santoro served as vice president of sales at NBCUniversal.

Aegis Group’s Carat USA has welcomed Laura Hernandez as head of multicultural. Hernandez was previously vice president and connections director of SMG Multicultural for Starcom MediaVest Group. Carat also announced the promotions of Johann Wachs to head of strategy and Michelle Lynn to head of consumer insight.

Along with its new European headquarters in London, Buddy Media announced that Luca Benini is joining the company as managing director of Europe, effective August 1. Previously, Benini served as vice president and commercial director of comScore Europe.

HookLogic has named George Stella director of media sales. While he spent the last two years first at Mindset Media and then MyBuys Media, Stella spent nine years at 24/7 Real Media, where he launched and expanded the Los Angeles media business.

For one thing, Gannet isn’t messing with blanket paywalls like Newsday — a regional news source for Long Island, NY — erected in October 2009. Newsday’s online site witnessed a stunning drop in unique visitors over the paywall’s first three months in action while digital-only subscriptions numbered a total of 35. In December, Newsday parent Cablevision dropped the paywall for a month, but now it’s back up.

News Corp. witnessed similar failings with its paywall experiments in the U.K., while The New York Times keeps pushing back the launch date of its pay meter.

However, Bloomberg reports: “Gannett’s newspaper in Greenville, South Carolina, has started charging readers $7.95 a year to access content devoted to Clemson University sports. Those subscribers view 40 to 70 pages per visit, compared with 6 to 8 pages on Gannett’s free websites….”

Mah goodness, it appears Gannett did its homework… As I have some relatives in Greenville, SC, I know from experience that Clemson fans are crazy — similar to the locals around many big sports universities. The demand is there, which was not the case for Newsday and isn’t the case for most regional newspapers.

Also, this isn’t the whole paper — it’s just Clemson sports.

I’m sure there are tons of blogs and upstart online pubs about Clemson University sports teams, but diehard fans — and many of them — will pay for a local newspaper’s coverage if it has credential. Remember when we were talking about credential last week? Not only is it important for online content, readers definitely won’t pay for content unless it has a high level of credential.

Despite credential, most local content does not have the demand to warrant a subscription, a truth that has existed for a long time. Growing up outside DC, our family received tons of free community newspapers, and their production was paid for solely by advertising (at least until the well went dry as the web filled up). I recall reading them when I was desperate for something to fill the boredom of my teen years, but I’m just a bad community member.

The logic behind regional regional paywalls and pay meters is that these outlets have content no one else does — the old limited supply game. But what if no one cares? Or rather, not enough people care — what if there’s no readership? If there’s no demand, it doesn’t matter how much supply there is.

Then there is AOL’s local news service Patch, which just added Outside.in to its assets and is now under the provision of digital content svengali Arianna Huffington. This will only increase the supply… Of stuff a limited audience care about. A friend was telling me last night he did a few assignments for Patch but had trouble writing them because they were boring. They weren’t newsworthy – “Write about this bar!” “Well, it has alcohol… There are stools too.”

If they were to dull to write, can you imagine how boring the content would be for most people to read?

So you’ve got an oversupply of resources for content in low demand. How the hell is a subscription model going to be an effective revenue stream?

Local online subscription models need a specific set of circumstances to work — specification, credential and demand – and very few content outlets fit the description while even fewer have the ability to work a subscription model at scale. With 81 regional papers under its belt, Gannett is likely to find a few more content outlets (or divisions of content outlets) that it can charge consumers to read.

But tradition is not dead — for at least the last hundred years, media sources have been primarily supported by advertising. Subscriptions will only be a stream that a minority of publishers will able to use. They are not the answer to the journalism industry’s woes.

Targeted digital advertising is.

The four media online and offline giants have teamed up to form quadrantONE and unleash the Q online private audience platform and ad exchange. This new tool is powered by AdMeld, which has also recently built private ad exchanges for IDG and The Weather Channel.

The fantastic four is advertising Q as a direct resource for media buyers to purchase premium local audiences from these major media outlets via an RTB platform — no third-party selling or verification necessary. The companies involved will continue their direct-selling efforts, but all other inventory will be sold through Q. Each company has devoted about 10% of its online inventory to quadrantONE.

“We have assembled some of the most trusted brands in the media industry to meet the challenges of today’s dynamic marketplace, and we look forward to Q becoming an indispensable tool for agencies, their trading desk practices and many other buyers as digital marketing continues to grow and evolve,” said Don Meek, Tribune executive vice president and quadrantONE board member.

In addition, quadrantONE will offer audience-buying service Q-Select, which includes real-optimization recommendations, campaign insights as well as brand/message recall and post-impression actions.

Pretty much it’s the evolution of the message boards and forums of yesteryear (yesteryear being oh… 2005?). And of course, these niche networks will provide avenues for marketing with previously unfathomable engagement levels. For example, I chatted with companies such as Gaia Online, a social network aimed at teenage anime fans, has partnered with media companies for some highly successful movie campaigns. Gannett operates many niche social networks and has had particular success with CPG campaigns on their maternity-focused outlets.

DeviantART, a social network devoted to artists (mainly visual, but there is a literature section), is sponsoring a contest to design the cover of the upcoming “The Big Under” graphic novel, which ties into Warner Bros. Home Entertainment release of the summer blockbuster “Inception.” DeviantART provides the script for the comic, which takes place immediately before the movie starts.

The first place winner will receive a $2,000 cash prize, may have his or her art grace the cover of the graphic novel, a one-year premium membership to the social network and more. There are also cash prizes for the second and third place entries.

DeviantART, which boasts 15 million registered members and 35 million uniques viewing 2 billion pages monthly, also has held contests for the films “Scott Pilgrim” and “Resident Evil: Afterlife” this year, as well as major electronic brands like Toshiba and Sony.

By the way, if anyone knows a good niche social network for struggling musicians, care to share? I need people to commiserate with.