THE parent company of The Press has been named the UK's Most Innovative Publisher for 2016 in recognition of its work on local digital advertising products.

Newsquest Media Group took the title at the Drum’s Digital Trading Awards, attended by the UK’s digital advertising industry in London last week.

The award reflects the innovative work achieved through the launch of a series of business specific local display advertising products

Mark Smith, digital director of Newsquest, said: "The challenge facing us was to make it easy for our local sales teams to provide our clients with not just standard display advertising but the same level of sophisticated targeting which national brands can access, while keeping the product, the sale and the process as simple as possible.

"I’m delighted that our digital display team rose to that challenge and they thoroughly deserve the accolade."

The new suite of products was developed by Newsquest’s central digital display team which created highly targeted advertising packages for specific client categories which were then rolled out across the group. This enabled local sales teams to offer highly effective digital display campaigns for smaller clients that dramatically improved the advertising performance.

Newsquest’s Digital Display director Simon Sarahs, said: "By putting our clients’ needs front and centre we were able to truly understand their business objectives, and then ensure that their advertising was in front of the right audience, at the right time and in the right environment."

As well as providing improved operational efficiencies, the new products increased average campaign values by 29 per cent, yields by 207 per cent, campaign click through rates by 325 per cent and viewability by 16 per cent.