Iliffe News and Media signs video partnership deal with Localstars

18 May 2011

Iliffe News and Media has formed a partnership with Localstars, which has its technology headquarters in Preston, to grow digital revenues with video and rich media. The regional publisher wants to offer a bigger choice of online marketing options and build digital ad sales revenues.

“The new Localstars’ solution lets us automate the creation of powerful video advertising. It gives advertisers on our leading web sites an exciting new format that really resonates with their target audiences, and provides us with a way of increasing digital revenue by capitalising on the growing interest in online video,” explained Andy Gough, MD of Iliffe Digital.

Localstars already works with a number of North West papers including the Lancashire Evening Post, Blackpool Evening Gazette and the Burnley Express. The partnership means that sales teams can log on and create a 15 second video advert for each advertiser by customising content from Localstars’ video library.

The adverts are then customised with logos, images and contact information. The videos are finally targeted to a specific local site and the Preston firm says that in total the process can take just 3 minutes from beginning to end.

“The cost of video advertising has typically been prohibitive to small companies, as they need to pay a production company to produce a video, then a media partner to find an audience. Iliffe News and Media is inverting this model – as it doesn’t charge separately for video creation,” added Chris Bunyan, managing director of Localstars.

“The advertiser simply pays a small premium on the cost of buying space on the Iliffe websites. This model means that all types of businesses can now benefit from the impact of video advertising, including small and medium sized companies.” In addition to video, a rich media ad builder will enable Iliffe to create interactive display adverts in the same way.

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