The winners of the awards, organised by the International News Media Association (INMA), were unveiled recently during a virtual announcement. The Straits Times (ST) scored second place in the "Best Initiative to Register Users" category with its "Gift an Article" feature. Launched in November 2020, the "Gift an article" feature allows subscribers of ST to share paywalled content with friends and family. Non-subscribers who receive gifted links can read the premium articles that have been shared with them, after registering for a free mySPH account. This feature was developed in response to feedback from subscribers, and allows more readers to sample original and exclusive work(s) produced by the ST newsroom. SPH also received honourable mention for "Best Use of Data to Drive Advertising" with its "Brand Safety Classification to Aid Inventory Exposure" solution.
The in-house machine-learning solution was developed to improve content and brand safety classification of articles published across SPH titles. Advertisers typically rely on topic keywords provided by publishers to ensure their advertisements are placed alongside content that is appropriate for their brand.
Experiments with this new solution showed that content and brand safety keywords can be served at lower latency with higher accuracy than the existing third party solution, resulting in an increase in brand safe, servable advertisement inventory.
Mr Warren Fernandez, editor-in-chief of SPH's English/Malay/Tamil Media group and editor of The Straits Times, said: "We will keep trying to improve on the experience for our audiences, to make our content more engaging and easier to access and share. This has to be a relentless effort, and we will keep striving to do more to serve our audience well."
Dr Deb Goswami, Head of Data & Analytics at SPH, said: "We are delighted to win this award, and it is a testament to the strong synergies between our business and growing data units. The most powerful outcomes arise when we combine a customer-centric mindset with actionable data. This is an important milestone in our efforts to enable data-driven outcomes within the organisation."
This year’s competition garnered 644 entries from 212 news brands in 37 countries. The finalists were from Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and North America. The Awards include 20 categories, focusing on excellence in news brands, media platforms, subscriptions, business development, and data and insights.
The International News Media Association (INMA) is the world's leading provider of global best practices for news media companies looking to grow revenue, audience, and brand amid profound market change. INMA aspires to be an essential resource in the multi-platform transformation of media companies that produce quality journalism and relevant content. INMA identifies for its members the best ideas to grow audience, revenue, and brand of news media companies. INMA also shares its vision with cutting-edge presentations and interviews involving media industry conferences, media industry leaders, the advertising community, and private consultations. INMA manages multiple news industry initiatives designed to lead on key issues and guide members where need be. INMA also shares its vision with cutting-edge presentations and interviews involving media industry conferences, media industry leaders, the advertising community, and private consultations. INMA members are executives at the world's leading news media companies. INMA today has 18,169 members at 800+ companies in 77 countries. Members are typically c-level executives involved in leadership and executive management, advertising, audience, digital, marketing, product development, and research.