THE Echo’s parent company Newsquest Media Group has been named 2016’s Most Innovative Publisher for its work on local digital advertising products.

The award was announced at the Drum’s Digital Trading Awards.

It reflects the innovative work achieved through the launch of a series of business specific local display advertising products.

David McMurtrie, Google’s head of publishers, UK and Ireland, said: “The Drum Digital Trading Awards are unique in covering digital trading across the entire ecosystem, recognising excellence in planning, creativity and execution. In a short space of time they have becoming a benchmark for the digital advertising industry.”

Mark Smith, digital director of Newsquest commented: “The challenge facing us was to make it easy for our local sales teams to provide our clients with not just standard display advertising but the same level of sophisticated targeting which national brands can access, whilst keeping the product, the sale and the process as simple as possible. I’m delighted that our digital display team rose to that challenge and they thoroughly deserve the accolade.”

The new suite of products was developed by Newsquest’s central digital display team who created highly targeted advertising packages for specific client categories which were then rolled out across the group.

This enabled local sales teams to easily and simply offer highly effective digital display campaigns for smaller clients that dramatically improved the advertising performance.

Daily Echo: Simon Sarahs, Newsquest's digital display director

Newsquest’s digital display director, Simon Sarahs, said: “By putting our clients’ needs front and centre we were able to truly understand their business objectives, and then ensure that their advertising was in front of the right audience, at the right time and in the right environment.”

The new products provided huge improvements to operational efficiencies while increasing average campaign values by 29 per cent, yields by 207 per cent, campaign click through rates by 325 per cent, and viewability by 16 per cent.

Newsquest has more than 165 local news brands across the UK, publishing online and in print. Its digital only businesses include s1 and Exchange & Mart.

It reaches 28 million visitors a month online and 6.5 million readers a week in print. Newsquest is part of Gannett, a next generation media company, listed on the New York Stock Exchange.