The Irish Times won a highly coveted Gold for ‘Best Execution of Native Advertising’ at the Global Media Awards in New York, organised by The International News Media Association (INMA). The winners were announced on May 23rd and The Irish Times was represented by Media Solutions Director Eimear Moran and Content Studio Editor Gary Quinn. The publisher won for the Audi Best of Both Worlds Campaign, collaborating with Mediacom Ireland, and took home an additional Bronze for ‘Best Marketing Solution for an Advertising Client’ for the Vhi Lets Talk Fertility campaign, collaborating with PHD.

With over 655 entries from 196 media companies in 36 countries, participants included newspaper media, magazine media, digital media, television media, and radio media. Competition entries were judged by an international panel of 44 executives from 17 countries.

The global acknowledgement of The Irish Times by the INMA for Content Studio follows on from recent national wins at The Media Awards 2017 for Best Sales Initiative, and the Digital Media Awards 2017 for Best Native Content, and further reinforces the Content Studio as a leader in the commercial brand publishing space.

In the 14 months since its launch, The Irish Times Content Studio has demonstrated that traditional mainstays such as excellent journalism and reaching the right audience give equity and prominence to brands in an attention seeking economy, with the delivery of 1.54M page views, 7.6 years of consumption time, 60+ individually crafted brand stories, and national and international awards.

Of the win, The Irish Times Managing Director Liam Kavanagh said “Content Studio has been built with the customer in mind to produce content that is trusted, appropriate and engaging, with values that are consistent with the ethos and core purpose of The Irish Times.  We are delighted with the international recognition from our global peers, not just for The Irish Times, but also for our valued partners PhD, Mediacom, Vhi and Audi, who trusted us to deliver their campaigns in a best in class manner. We look forward to building upon these successes in the future, producing compelling brand stories worth sharing, served to the reader in an environment they can trust”