11th June, London: Today The Ozone Project, the UK’s leading High Attention digital advertising environment, announces that ESI Media’s flagship brands, the Evening Standard and The Independent, will join the online partnership of premium news brands.

As the first national news brands to join The Ozone Project since its founding by News UK, The Telegraph, The Guardian and Reach plc, the Evening Standard and The Independent bring their engaged and valuable audiences into The Ozone Project environment. The Evening Standard is an iconic London brand, recognised as setting the agenda in politics and business, and provides brands and marketers a gateway to London’s high value audiences. The Independent has continued to serve its increasing progressive and global audience since embracing a digital-only future in 2016.

The addition of the Evening Standard and The Independent to Ozone's alliance will build greater audience depth and frequency to its current offering that already reaches over 99% of UK online adults every month. This new partnership will mean that 83% of Ozone's monthly audience will visit its sites every week (up by 1.9 million) and 48% on a daily basis (up 1.1 million)**.

This new partnership further enhances The Ozone Project’s mission to create a scaled, brand-safe and transparent advertiser-led offering that provides unrivalled access to the hugely trusted environments of the UK’s leading publishers. In addition to its founding news brands, recent alliances with Time Out Media, The Stylist Group and DC Thomson further expand the platform’s reach amongst audiences interested in entertainment, local news, culture and lifestyle. Many major advertisers have been reaching new audiences through Ozone's premium ecosystem, with some of the most recent including British Gas, HM Government, Lidl, Boots, Amazon, Pfizer and Nationwide.

“We are delighted to welcome Evening Standardto the Ozone family - not only as one of the UK’s biggest publishers, but as a shining example of the quality journalism fuelling our advertiser proposition. Ozone's purpose is to provide brands with greater choice in reaching the UK’s online population in the most trusted, safe and attentive environments, and we look forward to collaborating with Evening Standardto build an even better future for digital advertising.”

Damon Reeve, CEO, The Ozone Project

“We are immensely proud of our position as the UK’s largest quality newsband with The Independent and the award winning content of the standard.co.uk. In recent years we’ve seen a huge growth in readers across both of our flagship brands. In fact, The Independent has doubled the number of readers turning to it as a source of valuable, impartial, and progressive news since becoming digital only in 2016. As we further develop our digital channels across both the Evening Standard and The Independent, we’re excited to join The Ozone Project to make it even easier for brands to connect with our engaged audiences.”

Andy Morley, Chief Digital Revenue Officer at ESI Media