Ozone expands into Ireland with Mediahuis partnership
Ozone is expanding its footprint into Ireland with a partnership with Mediahuis Ireland that will see the publisher’s news and media brands become part of Ozone’s audience offering.
News brands joining Ozone under the partnership include the Irish Independent, Sunday Independent, Belfast Telegraph and Sunday World. Additionally, Mediahuis’ portfolio of weekly regional titles will be added to Ozone, including The Kerryman, The Sligo Champion, Wexford People and The Corkman.
The tie-up will improve the opportunity for brands looking to extend their audience reach into Ireland. In addition, Mediahuis’ Northern Irish titles will add to Ozone’s UK audience proposition, which according to September Pamco data reaches 17.4m individuals every day.
It is the first time Ozone has partnered with an Ireland-based publishing group, though Ozone has previously been able to sell audiences in Ireland from existing UK-based publishers in its collective.
Mediahuis was founded in 2014 and purchased Independent News and Media, which owned these Irish and Northern Irish titles, for €145.6m in 2019.
The company subsequently renamed the Irish publisher to Mediahuis Ireland and began introducing paywalls across its online publications within six months of the takeover.
Other titles in Mediahuis’ portfolio include De Telegraaf, the largest Dutch morning newspaper, and Flemish brands De Standaard and Het Nieuwsblad.
Last year, Mediahuis Ireland CEO Peter Vandermeersch told staff that the company had begun the process of moving from a current digital-print hybrid publisher to a digital-only publisher, warning that daily printed newspapers will disappear from the portfolio within the next decade — although it is likely to retain weekly products.
At group level, Mediahuis’ total revenue is currently split 70-30 from print and digital. However, by 2030, the publisher intends to flip incoming revenue to 30% print and 70% digital instead, as it looks to future-proof the business.
Mediahuis Ireland, meanwhile, closed its last print plant in Ireland in autumn 2022 and last year sought voluntary redundancies from its 350-strong editorial workforce.
In an interview last year on RTÉ’s This Week programme, Vandermeersch admitted he does not think printed newspapers have a future and warned local titles are “endangered”. However, he said “the present is really good”, given Mediahuis Ireland at the time earned revenue of €1bn, with €150m in operating profit.
“We want to prepare ourselves for the future, for the next three, four, five years,” he said, adding: “As long as journalism is there, I am a happy executive.”
The digital-first future will come with help from Ozone, which pools premium publishers’ data and sells their display ads at scale, creating a more attractive offering for ad buyers considering digital activations.
Ozone also offers an in-house creative studio and a sustainability programme.
“We’re thrilled to welcome Mediahuis Ireland’s titles to the Ozone family,” said publisher development director Dipti Patel. “These brands are essential to their respective national, regional and local communities and perfectly align with the types of consumer-first websites that epitomise the premium web. We’re excited to harness the power of our audience platform to drive incremental revenue for the group.”
Ozone members include founding shareholders News UK, Guardian News & Media, Telegraph Media Group and Reach, as well as Mail Metro Media, PinkNews, Our Media, BuzzFeed, HuffPost, Mumset and Asian Media Group.
In April, Dow Jones publications The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and MarketWatch became the latest publishers to integrate their UK audience into the Ozone platform.
Mediahuis Ireland sales director Paudie Sugrue added: “We are delighted to partner with Ozone, a support of premium news publishers across the UK and beyond. We take pride in the quality of our audiences, which align well with Ozone’s premium proposition for advertisers.”