Local media publishers join forces for UK-wide advertising reach

The collaboration, called 1XL, involves Johnston Press – which publishes this newspaper, as well as major titles such as the Yorkshire Post and The Scotsman – Local World, Newsquest and the majority of the UK’s independent local media businesses.

The platform brings together more than 800 sites and will allow brands, for the first time, to access a broad portfolio of local media advertising opportunities via a single sales point.

Ashley Highfield, CEO, Johnston Press, said: “Local media is increasingly becoming one of the most powerful, relevant and trusted ways to connect with a local audience. But national advertisers have been unable to truly capitalise on its potential, hindered by our industry’s innate fragmentation. Until now.

“The 1XL collaboration gives advertisers and their agencies, for the first time, the ability to scale their campaigns through ‘mass localisation’, and, as such, it is a monumental step forward for local media publishers, and we’re delighted to be partnering with Local World, Newsquest and the independents to help deliver this.”

1XL promises to give media-buyers access to a highly-engaged audience of 17.5m monthly unique users – more than any single commercial UK news website and similar in scale to digital advertising platforms AOL and MSN.

It will also allow them to take advantage of the rich content environment provided by thousands of experienced journalists publishing more than 50,000 articles every week across the network.

The platform will draw on data from each publisher and third-party data, alongside semantic and contextual targeting capabilities, to optimise audience targeting and maximise performance of advertising campaigns.

It will also enable adverts to appear around the most relevant and engaging content, and will be underpinned by leading geo-demographic analysis and insight provided by Mediaforce Group.

Scott Gill, group commercial director of Mediaforce Group, added: “We are confident it will galvanise advertisers and their media agencies to start thinking more about the importance of localisation within their digital advertising strategies, especially as the mobile revolution dawns.”