Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) has earned recognition at the INMA Global Media Awards 2021. The winners of the awards, organised by the International News Media Association (INMA), were unveiled today 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.
Thanks for your interest! Please leave your details below and we will get in touch with you soon.
Fields marked with * are mandatory.
