Against a backdrop of doom, gloom, and looming recession, Immediate faced the perennial challenges of magazine publishing: ongoing disinvestment in magazine brands; the perception of their brands and audiences; the battle to keep their brands relevant for their often-young planner buyers; all whilst transitioning traditional print clients to digital. They knew it would be a challenging year, and that they would need to do things differently. The Immediate Sales team decided it was time to prove the value of their highly engaged, contextual audiences, their unique data and insight, and their innovative, creative solutions.

The team began with their people, with a focus on building an inclusive and fun department that nurtures talents and celebrates success. They re-structured from separate print and digital teams to cross-platform, enabling them to develop deeper client relationships and deliver best-in-class service.

Immediate also launched their sales academy, attracting diverse talent and providing them with world-class sales training. It was a roaring success, with 50% of the first cohort ‘graduating’ to more senior roles. This team previously focussed on a print classified sell, but in a market that was down 16%, they need to pivot and take their SME clients on a digital journey. This team grew digital revenue into seven figures from a standing start.

Immediate grew direct sold digital and premium programmatic by 23%, working closely with clients to access first-party data within clean rooms. They relaunched IMAudiences, their data consultancy, helping planners better understand their target audiences and sectors. On top of this, they tested what a cookieless future might look like, helping advertisers on this crucial journey.

They launched creative firsts across native, high impact, video, social, and podcasts, and landed a £500k deal on RadioTimes.com by launching IMPush, a new add-to-calendar functionality. They develop a new native ingredient product on Good Food, winning new business and driving triple digit native growth. And a focus on social innovation meant they won large scale, social first partnerships with the likes of Nando’s and Diageo, beating the social pureplays at their own game and growing social revenue by 48%.

The Immediate Sales Team smashed the budget and delivere d18% annual growth in digital revenue. This compares to a magazine publishers digital forecast of -8.9%, meaning they outperformed their market by an incredible 27 points and grew market share by a whopping 39%.

Even the digital pureplays and platforms were forecasted to grow at only 7.7%

Here’s a quick overview of some of the team’s successes:

• Immediate’s new partnership with Spotify grew podcast revenue by a massive 94%.
• Building an innovative new ad wrapper maximised their open marketplace revenue, delivering 8% growth, with yields 2x the market.
• In creative partnerships, they combined innovation and brilliant service to deliver 30% growth.

Ultimately, by focusing in on the things they could control, investing in their talent, and working hand in hand with clients and agency partners to deliver great results, Immediate ads had a record-breaking year, completely bucking the trend of a very challenged market.

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