Mediahuis Improves Digital Marketing Performance and Slashes Complexity

Following the merger of publishers Corelio and Concentra in 2013, Mediahuis became the largest media group in Belgium. With an impressive portfolio including four well-known daily Belgian newspapers—Nieuwsblad, De Standaard, GVA, and HBVL—and dozens of sub-sites receiving millions of views on a daily basis, Mediahuis needed a central data management solution to improve efficiency and consistency across all web and mobile sites.

The inconsistency and site disparity that emerged as a result of this newly formed merger presented the need to implement a Tag Management Solution (TMS) to streamline digital marketing efficiency and achieve site consistency. Mediahuis’ Digital Traffic Centre required uniformity and the same environments across all the sites, creating a single view of reality through a TMS.

Choosing a TMS

Mediahuis employed MultiMinds, a specialist data and analytics agency, to identify the most appropriate tool for their requirements. After a thorough review of the market, Tealium iQ and Google Tag Manager (GTM) were shortlisted. GTM was later disregarded due to concerns relating to a limited tag marketplace, how Mediahuis’ data would be appropriated, and the lack of service level agreements.

Key to their selection of Tealium iQ was:

Flexibility: Tealium iQ allows Mediahuis to code their websites once and never again. The TMS provides generic tracking functions for web applications and the ability to track clicks without modifying the application code.

Expertise: Tealium provides Mediahuis with an unrivalled level of expertise, customer service and technical support.

Impressive integrations: Mediahuis can choose from an extensive tag library of over 700 vendors delivering specific functionalities. The chosen applications can be plugged into the TMS with point-and-click simplicity, allowing Mediahuis to select the best solutions for their business.

Solution Success

The experts at MultiMinds and Tealium worked closely with Mediahuis’ Digital Traffic manager to make an inventory of the data layer, the solid foundation that sends business critical information to the different analytics, marketing, CRM and in-house solutions used. The Tealium iQ solution guarantees consistency in the tag implementation process and the syntax of the data values, allowing Mediahuis to fully trust their data.

Once the data layer was in place, the flexibility to implement the vendor tags was huge. Vendor tags such as Google Analytics, Chartbeat, Optimizely and comScore were simply added from the Tealium iQ tag library while for the custom solutions, Mediahuis integrated the scripts via the custom container functionality.

Given the amount of disparate sites, this was a complex task but the experienced and methodical approach of the two teams delivered Mediahuis:

• A clean data layer that has had a positive impact from day one
• Increased flexibility to test solutions and launch campaigns
• A reduction in time to deploy marketing tags from four weeks to half a day
• A successfully deployed behavioral data tool within a couple of days, something which would previously have taken months.
• A consistent view across all web and mobile sites
• The ability to track the subscription funnel and make quick connections

“Thanks to Tealium iQ, we can now easily implement and manage tags in real-time to optimize Mediahuis’ new site. By streaming our tag management process, Tealium’s solutions have successfully reduced our site disparity and improved our digital marketing performance,” commented Yves Van Dooren, Manager of the Digital Traffic Centre at Mediahuis.

About Mediahuis

Mediahuis is a new media company, born in 2013 through a merger of 2 publishers: Corelio and Concentra. Key Mediahuis brands include Gazet van Antwerpen, Het Belang van Limburg, De Standaard, Het Nieuwsblad/ De Gentenaar, The Bulletin, Xpats, She, Vief and Autokanaal. On a daily basis Mediahuis sells around 550,000 newspapers and reaches more than 1.3 million digital news consumers through their websites.

About MultiMinds

MultiMinds is a dynamic and experienced data-driven startup, based in Belgium, consisting out of both technical and business experts. MultiMinds’ mission is to enhance efficiency and to improve the results of clients’ digital marketing activities and to express this added value in currency, a universal language. MultiMinds has clients in retail, travel, online gaming, media and publishing.