Digital Publishing Awards

2024 Winners

Congratulations to all of the winners!

Editor of the Year

WINNER: Jamie Carpenter - ENDS Report

Entered by: Haymarket Media Group

The judges were impressed by how Jamie is leading the charge and shining light on important issues, helping the ENDS report to gain traction and become more influential, whilst building a strong commercial performance.

Journalist of the Year

WINNER: Karl Flinders - Computer Weekly

Entered by: TechTarget

It’s hard to disagree that Karl’s passion and persistence has shone through on what has grown to be the biggest story of the year! He continues to be at the forefront of stories surrounding the Post Office Scandal, his dedication and perseverance really impressing all the jury members.

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Valeria Martinez – Investment Week

Entered by: Incisive Media

Valeria really impressed the jury with her 6-month investigation which generated real results. She also achieved one of the most read stories in 2023, showing that she truly understands what her audience wants.

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Ralph Blackburn

Entered by: NationalWorld

Ralph showed real determination in holding MPs and Media to account. He has helped to raise the brand’s profile by being successful in receiving a lobby pass and achieving direct action from his articles.

Rising Star

WINNER: Obomate Briggs

Entered by: New Scientist

Obomate is clearly excelling as a journalist in all areas – creative and technical – and is communicating science in an engaging way that is succeeding in attracting new audiences. Her results speak for her.

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Scarlett Stansall

Entered by: Mail Metro Media

The Jury commend Scarlett for the obvious positive impact she has had on the business and particularly for how well she is working with the whole team. Great testimonials!

Sales Person of the Year

WINNER: Peter Jones

Entered by: Autovia

The jury were really impressed with Peter’s extensive market knowledge, and his innovative strategic approach to overcoming really challenging market conditions. He’s a talented and tenacious salesperson who has fostered brilliant colleague and client relationships to help him achieve incredibly impressive yoy growth.

The AOP Award for Inspiring Local Journalism

Sponsored by:

WINNER: Luke Butterly

Entered by: The Detail

In a category where every entry was impressive, Luke stood out for championing an underrepresented and powerless group, challenging and exposing the abuse of voiceless individuals. His local journalism has had national implications and made a powerful impact.

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Joe Locker, Notts TV

Entered by: Notts TV

The jury were impressed by Joe’s persistence and his dogged determination, using social to rally the community and holding power to account – well done!

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Charles Thomson, Newsquest

Entered by: Newsquest

The jury commended the way he interlinked a strong content strategy, using a series of features and innovative ways to engage his audience.

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Anna Whittaker, Notts TV

Entered by: Notts TV

Anna showed a great sensitivity towards her topic, building great relationships and rapport enabling a community to form.

Advertising Operations Team of the Year

WINNER: William Reed

The jury were most impressed by this team’s resilience in navigating structural changes efficiently, whilst still maintaining a high level of service to their global client base. It is a great example of how ad operations teams are the heartbeat of publishing organisations’ commercial teams.

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Newsquest Media Group

Entered by: Newsquest Media Group

The jury were really impressed by the innovative spirit that seems to define the team at Newsquest and were especially impressed with their implementation of a chat bot service to increase efficiency.

Audience Development Team of the Year

Sponsored by:

WINNER: WhatsApp Publishing Team

Entered by: Reach PLC

The Reach team recognised a problem – that reliance on algorithms – and worked on a strategy across multiple titles to solve it, demonstrating innovative thinking and mobilising the business to support it.

HIGHLY COMMENDED: The Sun Audience Team

Entered by: News UK

The jury commended the Sun’s team for executing so many ideas and innovations over the past year – they are clearly a well organised team that everyone could benchmark against.

Editorial Team of the Year: B2B

WINNER: Community Care

Entered by: Mark Allen Group

The jury loved how this small team are making a clear impact in an under-served community, reversing a decline by stating clear objectives that they really delivered against, and leaning on a variety of expert publishing methods.

Editorial Team of the Year: Consumer

WINNER: The Telegraph Editorial Team

The jury were impressed by the ambition of the Telegraph’s editorial team and the success they’ve enjoyed in delivering exclusive scoops, shifting to an app-first approach, launching new channels and interactive tools to engage readers and breaking records in terms of subscription growth.

Product Development Team of the Year

WINNER: William Reed

The jury loved how this small team are using tech and data to deliver editorial and commercial growth, and strong engagement, all whilst working in harmony with other key areas of the business. Fantastic!

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Building Product To Support Multi-brand Digital Subscriptions Growth In Local News Media

Entered by: Newsquest Media Group

Increasing paid digital subscribers in the local news environment is so important – the Newsquest team were impressive in how they achieved this, pivoting and revisiting the key pillars of their strategy, in an even more sustainable way.

Sales Team of the Year

WINNER: Immediate

The Immediate team are smashing it – the jury loved the strong focus on people and culture and they are demonstrating that a great team culture leads to great results.

HIGHLY COMMENDED: The Sun Commercial Team

Entered by: News UK

The Jury commended the Sun team for their consistent, intelligent, people-facing sales approach.

Best Creative Solutions Led / Content Marketing Campaign

WINNER: Volkswagen ID. Buzz & What Car? Vans: Getting Van Buyers To #ThinkAgain

Entered by: Haymarket Automotive Studio

For sophisticated storytelling to meet a complex challenge – delivering strong results with a great partnership that succeeded in influencing a difficult market

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Never Mind The Taste Test: ASDA’s Taste Match Challenge

Entered by: Sky Media

The jury commended Sky for creating very engaging content and for setting very clear objectives for the campaign, with the great data to show it worked.

Best Digital Publishing Innovation

Sponsored by:

WINNER: Channel Accelerator

Entered by: The Channel Company

Consolidating multiple data points and platforms to build a comprehensive singular view is no easy feat, but a critical one in a market that demands precision, scalability and fast pace. Great work!

HIGHLY COMMENDED: WhatsApp Publishing

Entered by: Reach PLC

An excellent example of how staying on top of cutting-edge trends, leveraging existing platforms and new initiatives around simple ideas can have a big impact.

Best Diversification of Commercial Strategy

Sponsored by:

WINNER: Compass: A New Research And Insights Agency

Entered by: Telegraph Media Group

The Telegraph team have demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of future business opportunities and challenges and invested and committed to this new approach - the jury loved the dashboard introduced to make life easier for clients.

Best Media Technology Partner

WINNER: Pugpig

Best in class – for delivering scalable solutions, impressive partnerships, and close publisher relationships

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Monetising the Unmonetisable

Entered by: Opt Out Advertising

Commended for addressing a very real publisher problem with innovative thinking.

Best Publisher-led Social Good Initiative or Campaign

WINNER: Big Issue

Entered by: The Big Issue Group Ltd

The jury were so impressed by this case study which has engineered social change – they applauded the great engagement achieved with audiences and the strength of the commercial partnership which led to an uplift in perceptions for the giffgaff brand.

Best Research / Insight Project

WINNER: Sky, UKOM & Ipsos iris - An Industry First For Measuring Off-Platform Audiences

Entered by: Sky UK

This is an important piece of work, showcasing a great example of cross-industry collaboration, with the potential to go wider and help other publishers – all with clear and impressive results.

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Our London

Entered by: Evening Standard

The judges were impressed by the solid methodology, and the response to a challenging environment that produced good commercial results.

Best Use of Audio

WINNER: The Film Stories Podcast

Entered by: Film Stories

This was a clear passion project demonstrating the power of independent journalism.

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Room 106, Planning Magazine

Entered by: Haymarket Business Media

Planning Magazine made a dry subject interesting, and grew new subscriptions whilst maximising the engagement of existing subscribers, showing impressive engagement statistics.

Best Use of Data

Sponsored by:

WINNER: Nucleus By News UK

Entered by: News UK

An excellent example of utilising first-party data and preparing for the cookieless future. Nucleus is used to inform every digital brief response and focuses on metrics beyond traditional CTR’s. The jury was particularly impressed with the plans to expand use cases to editorial and marketing, and the fact that the data is available in real time.

Best Use of Video

Sponsored by:

WINNER: The Best Ever, Radio Times

Entered by: Immediate

Radio Times’ debut into video production showcased impressive results, effectively engaging the audience in a new and compelling way. Mark Summerton, Commercial Managing Director, Immediate “Being celebrated amongst our peers, winning The Best Use of Video award for our new show The Best Ever was a real highlight of the year. Going outside of our comfort zone in video was a leap of faith but after finding audience and commercial success being recognised by the industry was the cherry on top and renewed our confidence to continue pushing those boundaries.”

The AOP Employer Excellence Award

Sponsored by:

WINNER: Haymarket Media Group

This company has undergone a cultural transformation, driven by strategic initiatives embedded within their values, including taking actions to tackle their gender pay gap. Their people-first approach, both within the company and in the wider community, is leading to real change.

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Immediate

Entered by: Immediate

The judges admired their steadfast commitment to their people, from publishing an ethnicity pay gap report to hold themselves to account, to a wide range of training give their team the tools needed for everything from AI to tackling unconscious bias.

Best Online Brand: B2B

WINNER: Campaign

Entered by: Haymarket Media Group

Campaign set a strategic vision and delivered it showing clear demonstrable results across all areas, highlighting and campaigning on important issues and all with great testimonials!

Best Online Brand: Consumer

WINNER: The Telegraph

Entered by: Telegraph Media Group

The jury loved that long read publishing was enhanced with wide format imagery, video and animations, which delivered massive APP growth. They even proved that subscribers loved Ads!

HIGHLY COMMENDED: SoGlos - Gloucestershire's Leading Media Brand

Entered by: SoPublishing

They hit the brief perfectly, showing how all local publishing should be delivered.

Small Digital Publisher of the Year

Sponsored by:

WINNER: RocaNews

RocaNews are clearly punching above their weight, demonstrating clever insights and using innovative ways to reach their audience, making news exciting and attractive for the next generation.

HIGHLY COMMENDED: UKTN

Entered by: UKTN

The jury were impressed with how this small team secured phenomenal commercial partnerships.

Best Digital B2B Publishing Company 2024

WINNER: Haymarket Business Media, Haymarket Media Group

In every measurable way, from revenues through engagement to CAGR, the budget-busting digital subs-led model at Haymarket Business Media has transformed the business. Going “all-in” on digital has catalysed the team’s working practices; showcasing journalism alongside data, insights, and broadcast media, developing proprietary AI and LLM tools to build new products and amplify content, transforming the user experience and delivering the highest ever growth in subscription revenues.

Best Digital Consumer Publishing Company 2024

WINNER: Immediate

In a year of change, Immediate restructured its business, revised its business strategy, and invested in core skills to equip the business and its people to drive digital growth across all areas of business, bucking the wider market to deliver year on year growth across all metrics, drive reach and put in place the building blocks for the future.