Newsquest Media Group, the leading local multi-media group in the UK, has been named 2016’s Most Innovative Publisher for its work on local digital advertising products.

The award was announced at the Drum’s Digital Trading Awards.

It reflects the innovative work achieved through the launch of a series of business-specific local display advertising products.

Newsquest’s digital director Mark Smith 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, whilst keeping the product, the sale and the process as simple as possible. I’m delighted our digital display team rose to that challenge and they thoroughly deserve this accolade."

The new suite of products was developed by the company’s central digital display team which created highly targeted advertising packages for specific client categories. This enabled local sales teams to easily and simply offer highly effective digital display campaigns for smaller clients that dramatically improved advertising performance.

Newsquest’s digital display director Simon Sarahs said: “By putting our clients’ needs first we were able to understand their business objectives and ensure their advertisements were in front of the right audience, at the right time and in the right environment.”