National World, a media investment and management firm led by newspaper veteran David Montgomery, has partnered with Carbon by Clicksco, a newly developed data management platform. The partnership aims to deliver an improved quality of digital marketing services to owners and investors, by combining numerous news publishing sites onto one platform, while “retaining the distinct appearance, brands and content of each.”

Carbon, the cloud-based audience management platform, uses data from Clicksco’s 1.25bn global customer profiles to reach more consumers and maximize purchase intent. Through the industry-first merger, Carbon enables publishers to attract a premium from advertisers that had been previously challenging to reach.

Concurrent with the announcement of the merger, recently published research has shown that “despite a UK online audience reach of 84 per cent, news publishers see just four per cent of the UK’s digital advertising spend, while reportedly over 60 per cent of global digital advertising budget is in the hands of the two media giants, Facebook and Google.”

“The benefit of this single platform run by data scientists is that publishers can see their audience value grow through more sophisticated data management tools, and at the same time shed their individual digital infrastructure costs,” said David Montgomery, media executive for National World.

“The publishers can also still sell advertising packages separately and the integrity of their content is protected. The rationale for brands joining together online in this way, has no downside,” said Montgomery. “We are excited to see the positive disruption this partnership will bring to the sector and how it will help balance out advertising revenue streams for businesses of all sizes, not just those few who have the monopoly.”

Since its launch by Clicksco in February 2018, Carbon’s cloud-based data management platform has already been adopted by publishers in the U.S and Europe, including Say Media, the platform overseeing Maxim.com and History.com.

John Rowe, group chief executive officer of Clicksco said: “Faced with stagnating online sales and the loss of print revenues the industry is in a vicious circle that threatens the quality, originality and quantity of content. This partnership will give back control to the publishers through a single, cost-efficient platform.”

David Montgomery, former editor of two national newspapers and executive for multiple global media groups, brings extensive experience and publishing insights to the partnership.

“David’s vision for increasing profitability for publishers through technology fits perfectly with what we focus on at Clicksco and is a great strategic match,” said Rowe. “This is a momentous move for us and will help give Carbon the global reach it so rightly deserves.”