Launch of Innovative Digital Advertising Platform

JOHNSTON PRESS PLC

("Johnston Press" or "the Group")

Launch of Innovative Digital Advertising Platform

Johnston Press, a leading UK based local media group, is delighted to announce today the launch of an innovative digital advertising platform, 1XL, together with Local World, Newsquest and the majority of the UK's independent local media businesses. The launch represents another important strategic development for Johnston Press, enhancing the Group's ability to deliver its digital growth strategy.

The platform will, for the first time, provide national brands with local media advertising coverage across the UK via a single sales point. Bringing together over 800 websites, 1XL will enable advertisers to reach over 17.5m monthly unique users* nationwide, more monthly unique users than any single commercial UK national news media website and similar in scale to digital advertising platforms such as AOL and MSN. 

Under the terms of the collaboration, selected digital advertising inventory will be marketed via a dedicated media sales team at Mediaforce, the largest independently owned media sales company in the UK. The platform will optimise audience targeting and maximise the performance of advertising campaigns by drawing on data from all of the participating media groups, third party data, semantic and contextual targeting capabilities. It will also enable advertising to be served around the most relevant and engaging content, underpinned by Mediaforce's geo-demographic analysis and insight.

The industry partners believe a single sales point combining the strength and scale of local media to give advertisers unprecedented digital reach across the UK is a highly compelling advertising proposition. Industry research confirms the effectiveness of advertising on local newspaper websites, indicating that local newspaper websites are 71% more relevant to their local area than any other websites (including Google)**.

Ashley Highfield, Chief Executive Officer of Johnston Press, commented:

"Digital innovation is at the heart of Johnston Press' strategy for growth and we are excited to be helping to launch this partnership. 1XL should accelerate the growth of our digital revenues and therefore our tipping point, where digital revenue growth overtakes print revenue declines.

Local media is increasingly becoming one of the most powerful, relevant and trusted ways to connect with a local audience. The 1XL collaboration gives advertisers and their agencies, for the first time, the ability to scale their campaigns through 'mass localisation' and, as such, it is a significant step forward for local media publishers. We're delighted to be partnering with Local World, Newsquest and the independents to help deliver this.

We look forward to working with our partners to deliver the benefits of advertising on local newspaper websites on a nationwide scale."

* Source: comScore has provided an estimated audience figure for the 1XL network based on preliminary data. Note that comScore reports unique users, i.e. individual users, rather than the industry practice of reporting unique browsers, i.e. individual devices, which is the measure Johnston Press uses.

** Source: Local Media Works' Consumer Catalyst Research 2013

For further information please contact:

Website: www.1xl.co.uk 

Notes to Editors

The full list of titles to be available can be found at: www.1xl.co.uk/about.php