BRITIAN'S leading local media publishers have launched a digital advertising platform called 1XL designed to revolutionise local media buying.

Newsquest, the company behind The Northern Echo and its sister newspapers, has collaborated with news groups Local World, Johnston Press, and the majority of the UK's independent local media businesses, to harness the strength and scale of local media to give advertisers unprecedented UK-wide digital reach.

1XL will enable national advertisers to run one campaign through one booking across 800 local news sites, delivering a UK online audience that is larger than any other national news publisher.

It will be run through a dedicated media sales team at national sales house Mediaforce Group.

1XL will give buyers access to an audience of 17.5m monthly unique users* – more than any single commercial UK national news media website and similar in scale to digital advertising platforms AOL and MSN.

It will also allow them to take advantage of the rich content environment provided by thousands of experienced journalists publishing more than 50,000 articles every week across the network.

Henry Faure Walker, the chief executive of Newsquest, said:

"This is a significant step forward for Newsquest and our industry. Through 1XL, national advertisers will now be able to run one campaign seamlessly across 800 local news sites across the UK.

"Online display advertising is now worth over £2bn per annum, a market hitherto dominated by the likes of Google and Facebook.

"We look forward to local news publishers, with the huge investment they make in quality content and local journalism, being able to take their rightful share."

*comScore endorsed estimate September 2014