Overview of this campaign

Ozone is a digital advertising platform created by four of the UK’s leading publishers – an audience-led, premium publisher built, alternative to the big-tech and social platforms. Where these platforms make it easy for advertisers to invest through a single point of access, Ozone replicates that simplicity across the fragmented premium publisher landscape.

Having witnessed our UK success, international brands and agencies – who found it particularly challenging to activate premium publishers, across markets, at scale – frequently asked: “Can you replicate what Ozone does in other countries?” 

The theoretical answer was yes. Ozone delivers advertiser outcomes through the strength of the connections publishers create with their audiences. These connections are not limited to a single geography.

However, understanding market intricacies, combined with managing contractual and compliance obligations that make Ozone’s publisher relationships unique, make this no small task.

But where there’s brand demand, there’s a huge opportunity! We knew these international buyers wanted an Ozone-like solution that would deliver:

• AUDIENCE SCALE: tapping into highly engaged audiences across Europe and beyond, at a scale that rivals engagement with major platforms.

• AUDIENCE-FIRST ENVIRONMENTS: running ad campaigns only in environments where people come to be informed, inspired and entertained – just like news brands do.
  

• EASY TO ACTIVATE: given the time-pressured role of international planning and buying teams, any alternative had to give them the simple campaign activation that the major platforms do.

With this in mind, Premium World was born. The premise was simple: replicate Ozone’s UK audience proposition – running digital campaigns across premium publishers – in markets where brands needed to activate. Our goals were clear:

• Build a credible, alternative scaled audience-led, multi-market proposition that can be activated through one single point of contact.
  

• Generate incremental revenue for the publishing sector from budgets otherwise destined for social and tech platforms.
  

• Extend the advertiser proposition in line with demand for market coverage.
  

• Use Premium World conversations with publishers as a stepping stone into full contracting with Ozone’s audience platform.

Results for this campaign

In its first full year, Premium World delivered an incremental £2.6m of ad investment into premium publishing – revenue otherwise destined for social and tech platforms.

Similarly, we grew our coverage of regions by 7x, increasing Premium World’s presence from an initial 5 European markets to 36 worldwide.

New internal processes delivered the Premium World promise:

• PUBLISHER SELECTION: Hand-selected publishers with premium profiles in each market – editorially governed and recognised mastheads – before validating via  technical and market reach audits.
  

• MARKET PRIORITISATION: Shaped market activation order in line with advertiser demand.
  

• MARKET GOVERNANCE: Proactively assessed local language requirements, advertising restrictions, compliance, and data regulations to be market-ready for new activations.
  

• CREATIVE CAPABILITY: Balanced advertiser format demand with publisher capability – delivering campaigns with 8 different formats.

Premium World offers easy activation for international advertisers to reach the most engaged audiences. To date, many of these advertisers have heavily invested in major platforms for easy, scaled reach – we deliberately designed Premium World to complement them on media plans:

• £2.6M OF INCREMENTAL REVENUE TO PUBLISHING: Delivered through 56 individual campaigns.
  

• RAN CAMPAIGNS FOR 34 MULTI-NATIONAL ADVERTISERS: Including AXA, Bridgestone, Disney, Brittany Ferries, British American Tobacco, Microsoft, Nokia and many more.

• WORKED WITH 24 DIFFERENT AGENCY GROUPS: Built relationships with new teams beyond our usual domestic platform remit.
  

• MOMENTUM IN QUARTERLY GROWTH: As we took our offering to market,  booked revenue growth demonstrated Premium World’s market-fit: Q2 was up +105% vs Q1, with Q3 up +247%, and Q4 up +349%.
  

• COMPETED AND COMPLEMENTED: Secured a the totality of a £400k+ pan-region display campaign budget initially destined for social media.
  

• GREW OUR PORTFOLIO: Prensa Iberica and Media Figaro contracted as full Ozone platform partners, with 8 further publisher groups in advanced discussions.

These results prove that technology isn’t the only driver of innovation. By focusing on creating the right service to meet advertiser demand, we delivered great results for news brands.

Only one year in, the (Premium) World is our oyster. 

 

Contact

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