MISSOURIAN CLASSIFIED BECOMES INTERACTIVE

The Southeast Missourian has joined with the Missouri Press Service to provide a new statewide telephone classified advertising system. "Call-It-Sold!" is the nation's first interactive classified advertising service.

"This is a unique way for newspapers of Missouri to work together to offer a new service to buyers and readers of want ads across the state," said Doug Crews, executive director of Missouri Press Service, Columbia.

"Missouri is the first state to link the classified ads from many newspapers with a telephone network to make those ads available to the readers of all the papers," he said.

The new statewide system was launched Wednesday, with more than 80 newspapers totaling almost a million circulation. Any person with a touch-tone telephone can call the system toll-free and hear ads from across the state.

The system contains more than 500 classified categories, from Corvettes to property at the lake, and from baseball cards to antique quilts. Each category has a number.

To use the system, callers will dial the toll-free Call-It-Sold! number, 1-800-474-1111. The callers then will enter the four-digit numbers for the categories they want.

Participating newspapers will publish the list of phone numbers and encourage their readers to keep the list in their phone books.

Once connected to a category, the caller will hear ads that appear in Missouri newspapers. People who want to place an ad on the network may do so at any participating newspaper. The Southeast Missourian is among participating papers.

When a person places an ad in the newspaper, they can simply request that the ad be placed on the Call-It-Sold! system. The cost is an additional $2 per day, with a five-day minimum.

Jim Sterling, former publisher of the newspaper in Bolivar, is executive director of Call-It-Sold!

"This is highly targeted marketing," Sterling said. "A person with baseball cards to sell wants to reach people who want to buy or trade baseball cards. The person who wants to buy baseball cards doesn't want to go through an entire list of collectibles to find out about baseball cards.

"With this program, the classified ads from Missouri's newspapers can be heard by the people who want to hear them, in specific categories. If they want baseball cards, they get baseball cards. If they want farm equipment, they get farm equipment."

Broad classifications of ads include real estate, hobbies and recreation, events and notices, business and professional services, employment, transportation, animals and agriculture, and merchandise. To hear a specific category within a classification, a caller needs only the four-digit number for the category.

Even within a category, using the system is simple. A caller can have an ad repeated or can skip an ad simply by pushing the designated digit on the phone pad. Easy instructions on how to use the system will be published.

"When you are looking for a car, a job, a boat, an auction or a piece of retirement property, we expect you to look at your local newspaper classified ads first," Sterling said. "But to expand your search to a larger area, up to the entire state, Call-It-Sold! is the easy and inexpensive answer.

"When using the classified section to sell or announce something, a few extra dollars will carry your message across the state to people who are interested in that kind of item or event. Placing an ad costs very little. Calling the system is free," he said.