Independent News and Media (INM) has set up a new digital innovation team to harness the potential of its ad tech, video production, digital creative, digital insights and product development teams. The new team follows the publisher’s decision to hire a number of key staff from rival publishers including Maximum Media and News Ireland as well as Deloitte and Concentrix.
According to Brian Sheehan, head of digital innovation & strategy: ‘’I feel fortunate to lead a very talented team across the island of Ireland as we look to evolve the digital strategy of INM. 2020 has been a very difficult time for the media industry. It is our goal to provide market leading products which will excite advertisers and truly justify every euro spent during this challenging period. We hope to create the best digital team on the island of Ireland and have recently made strong hires including Hughie Devine from News Ireland working on programmatic partnerships; Matt Malone from Maximum Media, working on digital creative and Solomon Paul from Concentrix and Patrick McConnell from Deloitte, who will work on data mining & insights.’’
“From the first impression to the last impression our Ad Ops Team fully manages campaigns to the highest standards in order to deliver strong results but more importantly great returns on investment. Whether your campaign be a standard campaign or programmatic we believe we have the knowledge and tools to be the best in class and can truly offer a premium service across our Network of sites,” adds Chris Gordon, head of digital ad operations & programmatic
“Trust and transparency on our audience data have always been an integral part of advertising solutions at INM but the new team are stepping things up with the appointment of Connor Diamond as Head of Digital Insights. It’s important for us to be able to offer a best in class product to our advertisers whether through premium or programmatic channels. Using insights to refine our strategy as well being a key component of our product suite is a significant step for INM. The team have been working hard to ensure that we have the best technology in place to help drive our vision. The Digital Innovation Team are excited to launch new products in 2020 including ‘Programmatic Plus’ which will offer the highest quality performance and the most sophisticated targeting capabilities amongst publishers,” Gordon says.
According to Karen Preston, group advertising director: ”Our business has seen incredible success with our digital first strategy, with almost 30,000 paying subscribers since we launched paid-for content for Independent.ie in February and Belfast Telegraph.co.uk in May, followed by the launch of our regional e-papers. We couldn’t have asked for a better start in securing a solid future for the commercial success of all our titles. As we move forward on INM’s digital roadmap, I am delighted to unveil our Digital Innovation Team as our first commercial step towards a bright future for creative, impactful and market leading advertising solutions from some of Ireland’s favourite newsbrands.”
