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The Sun the Times

News UK restructures regional ad sales teams to cater for major multiplatform push

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By Jessica Davies, News Editor

December 19, 2013 | 3 min read

News UK has restructured the sales teams at its regional hubs in Manchester, Glasgow and Ireland as it looks to position itself as a major cross-platform player with clients and drive new ad partnership formats.

The publisher, owner of The Times and The Sun, has overhauled its traditional display and classified newspaper sales structure to focus on becoming a more multiplatform business.

Speaking to The Drum News UK regional sales director Liz Perkins said the changes have included introducing digital training schemes to up-skill all employees to ensure they are ahead of fresh demands from digitally-savvy clients looking for cross-platform partnerships.

It has created three central teams which will sell across all brands and platforms and it has established an insight strategy team created to explore the publisher’s data segmentation strategy.

“Now we have realigned and have this new structure we need to better understand how data segmentation can help us hone our targeting on behalf of clients. Our new insight team will work with the London hub to help make sense of the data to figure out new sales approaches,” she said.

Perkins said one of the biggest challenges has been ensuring that the commercial strategy can evolve as fast as the editorial one has. “Editorially we have been very digital and have ensured that commercial can keep up with that and monetise in sync, which is a challenge”, she added.

The publisher will explore new forms of brand extensions as part of its new strategy and from next year it will begin to hone in on selling new innovation packs including enriched ad formats across its brands.

These new products are being developed by the central London hub’s ad innovation unit, led by News UK ad director Abba Newbery.

Newbery previously told The Drum that the publisher has overhauled its order management system, meaning clients can book a multiplatform campaign via one system. She said once this new functionality is in place it opens up opportunities to push programmatic into the print space.

The restructure, which Perkins initiated when she took over as regional sales chief earlier this year, has also seen the promotion of Nicole O’Shea to the role of head of sales for Manchester.

Meanwhile Karen Sinclair was promoted to head of ad sales at News UK's Glasgow office in June and David Monaghan as head of ad sales in Dublin. All three report in to regional sales director Liz Perkins.

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News Corp UK & Ireland Limited, is a British newspaper publisher, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the American mass media conglomerate News Corp.

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