Local Media Consortium Announces Strategic Partnership with Okanjo to Provide Members with a Suite of New Native Commerce Solutions

SARASOTA, Fla., March 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Local Media Consortium (LMC), a strategic partnership of leading local media companies, today announced it has forged a strategic multi-year partnership with Milwaukee-based native platform provider Okanjo to provide Consortium members with a suite of new tools to increase audience engagement and broaden native commerce solutions across their more than 1,700 local media sites.

"We are enthusiastic about our partnership with Okanjo because they come highly recommended by several of our longstanding members," said Rusty Coats, executive director of the LMC. "This partnership provides our members and their advertisers with cost-effective access to Okanjo's proprietary, turnkey solutions to engage readers through relevant content and ecommerce. Today's consumers — millennials in particular — expect to find relevant product embedded in their content consumption without the nuisance of click bait, and these tools provide us with new ways to do this."

Okanjo was selected as an LMC partner following an extensive vetting process by Consortium members that included excellent reviews from Gatehouse Media and Lee Enterprises, who have used Okanjo's platform in their local markets. Through the strategic partnership with Okanjo, the LMC's members will have access to Okanjo's distinctive native commerce solutions, some of which are first-to-market exclusive offerings designed to increase audience engagement and provide new digital revenue opportunities. These include:

• SmartServe Ad Unit. An  intelligent ad unit that drives digital revenue by enhancing publishers' content, not distracting their readers. Leveraging artificial intelligence and IMB's Watson, SmartServe analyzes content for context, keywords and sentiment to recommend products and articles that engage individual readers.
• Pressed Native Content. Pressed is a modern content engine built to help online publishers grow a new, younger audience and increase social relevance. Pressed articles are timely, topical and eCommerce enabled.
• Curated eCommerce Stores. The eCommerce stores pair top products with a publisher's market-specific special sections, recurring columns, or other specialty content. This enables publishers to offer turnkey solutions to advertisers from local mom-and-pop stores to national chains.
• The Farm, Okanjo's new Product Curation Engine. The LMC members will be the first to have the option to utilize Okanjo's Farm tool, which makes curating products from top brands a breeze and ensures content is always serving products that generate revenue. The Farm brings together millions of products from multiple affiliate networks and a variety of advertisers into one management platform. Publishers can easily filter, select and group products by commission rate, product category, brands, price and more.

"We are incredibly excited to be a strategic partner for the Local Media Consortium," said Charity Huff, Okanjo CEO. "The tools we're providing members bring together eCommerce and native advertising, two elements that are truly moving the needle for local media."

ABOUT OKANJO

Okanjo transforms content into commerce. Okanjo's Native Commerce platform provides publishers and advertisers with turnkey solutions that increase consumer engagement and enhance the reader's online experience. Okanjo's technology powers a variety of eCommerce tools, including SmartServe, Native Marketplaces, Product Curation Engines and Pressed. Okanjo was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in Milwaukee, WI. Learn more about Okanjo at www.okanjo.com.

ABOUT THE LOCAL MEDIA CONSORTIUM:

The Local Media Consortium is a strategic partnership of leading local media companies focused on increasing member companies' share of digital revenue and audience by pursuing new relationships with a variety of technology companies and service providers. The LMC was founded in 2013 to address the needs of advertisers seeking to reach high-quality audiences on brand safe local digital properties at scale. In addition, the LMC provides members with access to leading technology and content solutions by fostering key partnerships with companies including Google, Monster, Yahoo and others. LMC membership encompasses more than 75 local media companies in top markets across the United States and Puerto Rico, and includes more than 1,700 publications. The LMC audience footprint currently spans 155 million unique monthly visitors and its member companies serve more than four billion page views to readers. More information is available at www.localmediaconsortium.com.

SOURCE Local Media Consortium

Related Links

http://www.localmediaconsortium.com