PERFORMANCE

Mail Online launched a fresh new design in May, delivering more pictures and stories on its homepage than any other UK newspaper website. The new design has been a success, demonstrated in its annual year on year performance:

• Unique visitors have grown 32% from 13.5 million in October 2007 to 19.8 million in October 2008*;
• Page impressions have increased from 108 million in October 2007 to 151 million in October 2008, a 40%* increase.

Less often measured across the industry is the time visitors spend engaging with a site. Mail Online's average time per visit has risen sharply from 5.15 minutes in October 2007 to 6.36 minutes in October 2008. During one day this October, Mail Online visitors spent 147,000 collective hours engaged with our content. Over the entire month this totalled 189,916 days.

Since launching its new design Mail Online has also developed a new advertising format, the Belly Band, offering premium brands access to a larger than normal advertising space centrally within a page. A number of premier brands including Nivea and Pathe Films have been early adopters. The Femail fashion reviews have been complemented by new functionality that enables a user to 'click & buy', directly from its pages. Mail Online is leading the market in integration of reviews linked directly to hundreds of retailers.

* ABCe audited figures, November 2008

PERFORMANCE

Northcliffe Media reaches millions of local people across hundreds of local communities. A key factor behind their future success is the requirement to build and maintain strong relationships with local advertisers.

In this Web 2.0 age of online personalisation, Northcliffe realises the need for constant innovation in order to provide modern and efficient advertising services that clients expect and to increase their market penetration.

This led to a decision to build a proprietary tool called the Bubble, operated by sales staff, which allows them to select and customise top quality creative advertisements for a client without the need for a studio or art desk. And because it only takes them an average of three minutes to customise an advert, it means that excellent creative work can be made available to clients on a while you wait basis.

The Bubble team produce over 100 ads per week and they have already built up a library of 15,000+ print ads and over 2,000+ online executions covering all advertising categories. Even though the system focuses on print and online, it is completely adaptable to other media.

The Bubble is helping Northcliffe to attract, retain and increase advertising revenues.

PERFORMANCE

The Cover - www.coveredbondnews.com - is a daily online-only news service dedicated to the covered bond market.

An extension of the EuroWeek brand, The Cover was created to engage with a small community within the fixed income industry that deals primarily with covered bonds. This web service provides exclusive breaking news as new issues are launched, as well as essential information on the secondary markets, relevant regulation, bespoke league tables, opinion polls and stories on the people that matter. The Cover was specifically designed to allow readers to comment on articles and vote on transactions, and thereby reflect what the market really thinks.

Over 150 professionals, including issuers, investment bankers, credit rating agencies, law firms, regulatory bodies and investors now subscribe to The Cover and use it daily as a research tool. It is no coincidence that The Cover won the award for best launch of the year at the Specialist Industry Publishers Association conference.

"I find The Cover to be the best and most efficient way of keeping abreast of market developments."

Thor Tellefsen, Senior Vice President of investor relations and long term funding, DnB Nor

PERFORMANCE

With the launch and evolution of EMT, 'Enrolment Management Technology', Hobsons has grown into a worldwide leader in education solutions, serving more than 1,000 institutions of higher learning around the world with unique technology solutions for recruitment, management, and advancement of students.

As the demand for technology in higher education grew louder at the start of the new millennium, Hobsons began to listen. EMT was launched in April 2000 with a single web-based customer relationship management (CRM) product to help colleges and universities manage student data and easily send electronic communications. Today, this single recruitment CRM has spawned an entire suite of innovative products, ranging from online application management, social networking tools, predictive modelling software, and retention solutions that allow schools to work with current students.

Hobsons' Client Development Model has become the standard of service in higher education technology - consistently outperforming their competition with personal attention and client engagement. Hobsons' product development is driven entirely by customer feedback, ensuring that their products consistently meet the needs of the higher education professional. EMT also boasts the largest and most diverse user community in higher education. All of these have helped make Hobsons the world's largest enrollment management company with the size of its client roster, the number of student records and applications processed, and the number of students served.

PERFORMANCE

In April 2008 Environmental Data Resources (EDR) launched commonground, the first global business networking community for environmental professionals involved in all aspects of property due diligence.

This collaborative network brings together environmental professionals, engineers, mortgage lenders, attorneys, insurers, appraisers, inspectors and industry thought leaders and provides them with real time access to industry knowledge, expertise, and learning. In just a few short months, commonground is being harnessed by nearly 2,000 members worldwide who are contributing content and benefiting from:

• Real time answers from peers and experts on pressing questions
• Hundreds of downloadable documents, research reports, podcasts and articles
• Ongoing discussions concerning market issues, trends, and legislation
• Access to blogs, event calendars, news and business opportunities
• Commonground members hail from over 60 countries including the United States, UK, Brazil, Mexico, Italy, China, Hong Kong, India and Australia.

In September 2008, commonground was nominated for a Forrester Groundswell Award, and according to web information statistics, commonground is already in the top 1.75% of all web sites in total traffic.

commonground.edrnet.com