News UK unveils data platform with 36.5m customers

News UK, the company behind The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun, Virgin Radio, TalkSport and Times Radio, is launching a data platform which it claims will give advertisers the chance to reach more than 36.5 million customers.

Dubbed Nucleus, the platform is based on first-party data, which the media giant claims offers a more privacy-compliant, future-proof and accurate approach to targeting.

Nucleus uses a combination of first-party demographic data alongside contextual targeting information and insight such as preference, opinion and emotions. The company claims emotional context can increase ad consumption by up to 45% by understanding the emotional resonance of the content around which it sits.

The platform will also be used internally to improve personalised reader offers, understand reader engagement with editorial content, develop new advertising products and boost subscriptions.

News UK commercial director of publishing Ben Walmsley commented: “Nucleus is the next step in an ambitious programme of development for new advertiser tools at News UK. It shifts our approach to one based purely on first-party data, augmented by our own contextual targeting capabilities.

“First-party data gives brands greater targeting accuracy, ensures that they remain privacy compliant and future proofs their activities in a rapidly changing market.

“Alongside the scale of our first-party audiences across our world-class portfolio of brands, Nucleus lets advertisers reach and understand their consumers better than ever before using both traditional demographic insight as well as rich contextual understanding around areas such as emotions.

“Nucleus will now form a part of all partnership briefs, ensuring campaigns are tailored to our audience’s preferences, opinions and emotional resonance.

“The power of emotion as a targeting mechanism is becoming ever-more important. Emotions drive actions and the rich storytelling approach across the News UK portfolio of brands inspires emotions in a way that no other media format can.”

A recent report by Forrester Consulting, commissioned by audience platform Permutive, revealed that 95% of publishers have already started building their first-party data monetisation strategies.

The move is in response to the double whammy of stricter data protection legislation and fears over gaining consumer consent which is opening up a major opportunity for online publishers to work cheek by jowl with brand owners in an effort to ensure companies have compliant data for their marketing activities.

At the time, Permutive co-founder and chief executive Joe Root said: “Publishers’ first-party data will be the new media currency in the future of digital marketing as a privacy-safe foundation for brands to continue targeting consumers – without identifying and tracking them across domains. But brands and publishers must partner if they are to tackle data depreciation.”