Journal Media to sell ads for Daft and DoneDeal

Journal Media and Distilled SCH, two companies linked by the Fallon brothers, have announced an advertising partnership that will unite commercial sales across TheJournal.ie, Daft.ie, Adverts.ie and DoneDeal, as well as TheJournal's offshoots The42, DailyEdge and Fora.

Distilled SCH chief executive Eamonn Fallon said the partnership would "create the only real Irish alternative to Google and Facebook from a scale perspective".

Journal Media will be taking the lead on sales, with advertising for all seven brands sold through the company from early 2017.

Distilled SCH will “focus on delivering specialised products for finance and motoring audiences”, Journal Media said.

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Norwegian shareholding

In 2015, Distilled Media Group signed a deal with Norway's Schibsted Media Group that merged two Distilled businesses, the property portal Daft.ie and the online marketplace Adverts.ie, with Schibsted's classifieds site DoneDeal.ie.

The vehicle that is now called Distilled SCH was formed, with Distilled and Schibsted each taking a 50 per cent shareholding.

The deal was conceived with a view to improve the scale of both companies as they seek to compete in an online advertising market dominated by Silicon Valley tech giants.

Mobile-first

The Fallon brothers, Eamonn and Brian, founded Daft.ie in 1997 and set up TheJournal.ie in 2010. The latter went “mobile-first” in 2012 and was an early adopter in Ireland of the native advertising model, meaning it makes its money from online advertorial or sponsored content. Sub-brands The42, DailyEdge and Fora focus on sport, entertainment and business respectively.

Journal Media Limited, the company behind the news app, made a loss of €574,000 in 2015, accounts recently filed to the Companies Office show.

The seven sites in the new partnership have an average daily reach of 1.1 million people, according to Google Analytics / AT Internet figures.