Rival newspaper groups join to fight Google on ads

Online push: the companies are launching the joint digital ads sales platform

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19 November 2014

Britain’s rival regional newspaper groups today united to launch a joint digital advertising sales platform to challenge online giants such as Google and Facebook.

Yorkshire Post owner Johnston Press, the Local World group behind Northcliffe newspapers, and US-owned Newsquest are launching 1XL, which claims 17.5 million monthly unique users across 800 news websites.

Johnston Press chief executive Ashley Highfield, a former executive at Microsoft and BBC iPlayer, said 1XL would allow advertisers to target their campaigns more efficiently on a local basis but at scale, a strategy he dubbed “mass localisation”.

He claimed 1XL will be “similar in scale to digital advertising platforms such as AOL and MSN”, but it would still lag Google and Facebook in size.

Newsquest boss Henry Faure Walker said the UK’s online display ad market is worth £2 billion and local papers, with their “quality content”, should “take their rightful share”.

Trinity Mirror, the other big UK regional publisher, is not part of 1XL but it is an investor in Local World.

Rival newspaper groups join to fight Google on ads

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