2024 Winners
Congratulations to all of the winners!
Editor of the Year
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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:
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
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:
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.
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
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
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
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!
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
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.
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
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
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:
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!
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:
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
Best in class – for delivering scalable solutions, impressive partnerships, and close publisher relationships
Entered by: Opt Out Advertising
Commended for addressing a very real publisher problem with innovative thinking.
Best Publisher-led Social Good Initiative or Campaign
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
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.
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
Entered by: Film Stories
This was a clear passion project demonstrating the power of independent journalism.
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:
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:
Entered by: Immediate
Radio Times’ debut into video production showcased impressive results, effectively engaging the audience in a new and compelling way.
The AOP Employer Excellence Award
Sponsored by:
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.
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
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
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!
Entered by: SoPublishing
They hit the brief perfectly, showing how all local publishing should be delivered.
Small Digital Publisher of the Year
Sponsored by:
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.
Entered by: UKTN
The jury were impressed with how this small team secured phenomenal commercial partnerships.
Best Digital B2B Publishing Company 2024
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
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.
