Associated To Create ‘Big’ Brand Websites In Press Campaign

Associated Newspapers is planning to promote the websites created by its new media division, Associated New Media (ANM), by placing ads in its three flagship newspapers, the Daily Mail, Mail On Sunday and Evening Standard. In what ANM thinks will be possibly the largest spend on promoting websites in the national press, ‘a seven figure sum’ is to be spent promoting www.thisislondon.com, www.soccernet.com and www.ukplus.com over the next twelve months.

Whilst soccernet currently receives around 13 million page impressions a month according to ABC //electronic figures, ANM believes that people are now coming onto the internet ‘in droves’. Using the Associated papers to promote the sites is ideal as the audience is already predisposed to the content on which the ANM websites expand, said a spokesperson.

NOP research for Associated has shown that the Daily Mail reached a quarter of all UK internet users at some point over the six months to June 1998. ANM says that this outperforms all the broadsheets in this area. Furthermore, the same research shows that the Evening Standard reached 22% of internet users in the LWT region over the year period; this is around 477,000 users of the Net.

The new campaign, which may roll out across other newspapers later in the year, hopes to create ‘big’ brand names, reaching a mass market, for of the sites. To date, ANM has relied on online marketing and distribution to promote its sites but has decided to ‘ramp up the marketing strategy for 1999’.

ANM is launching thisismoney.com, the latest in its This Is… series of websites, at the end of this month (see Associated New Media Launches Personal Finance Website).

Associated New Media: 0171 927 8501