Audiences are becoming more and more sophisticated in how they want to consume content and we work hard to provide the information and services they want in the ways they want to receive it.
We offer iPad apps for The Scotsman and The Yorkshire Post with more to be unveiled soon. The Group also has iPhone apps for our Jobstoday and iAnnounce (family announcements) platforms.
Our mobile sites have enabled us to reach a younger audience with figures showing 67% of users are under the age of 35. Early research shows around 20% of our online traffic now comes from mobile devices.
Our newspapers, supplements and magazines remain at the forefront of the communities they serve. Consumer behaviour influences our every move and we regularly undertake extensive market research to ensure we are meeting our customers’ needs. As a result a number of our broadsheet titles have relaunched in compact format.
Our companion websites and mobile sites provide a 24/7 news offering and we are able to provide precision targeting for advertisers.
Our news teams also use social media – Facebook, Twitter and other digital platforms such as Storify – to engage our readers in 24/7 dialogue. The use of video on our websites is also generating more traffic and interest.
Commercial online platforms provide a wide range of services to both advertiser and reader:
Find it
Our new online business listings directory and review website was launched across the Group in March 2011, in partnership with Qype, Europe’s largest user-generated local reviews site. This new digital platform enables our website users to find reputable local businesses (whether that be a plumber you can trust or a great local restaurant), aided by other customers’ reviews and ratings.
Property
A partnership with the national property website, Zoopla, sees them power a local classified property platform across all of our markets. This enables our property advertisers to benefit from the combined audience of our local websites and the Zoopla network.
Jobstoday
Our online recruitment offering matches prospective employees with employers and we provide an ‘instant interview’ screening service through which we provide shortlists of applicants to advertisers. Thousands of CVs are uploaded every week and the site consistently sees more than one million unique users a month.
The Group is developing niche markets. We launched an online deals platform, DealMonster, in September 2011 and now operate in Edinburgh, Blackpool, Sunderland, the North West, Leeds, Sheffield, the Midlands and Portsmouth with further launches planned in 2012. A separate team runs this business, working closely with the newspaper publishing units in leveraging both existing advertiser relationships and our own local media in the marketing of the platform. Our focus is on local deals and although the business is still at an early stage, we are very encouraged by performance to date.
We also have a separate events & exhibitions division which holds a growing number of large scale, quality shows around the UK, attracting thousands of visitors and big name exhibitors. The division also works closely with our regional publishing units to stage a range of smaller, localised shows.