Westborough, VA, August 2, 2021 – The first French-English DIY ad portal created by iPublish Media Solutions in partnership with Sud Ouest Publicité, a group of five French newspapers, has launched with a unique marketing campaign.

The custom DIY platform, white-labeled as Sopenads, allows businesses to design, buy and target multi-media ad packages online without a sales rep.

“We wanted to be able to offer discounted advertising incentives to small-to-medium-sized businesses as they recover from Covid-19,” said Katia Doublet, Customer Relations Manager at Sud Ouest, headquartered in Bordeaux.

The campaign to market the initiative is aimed at “Artisans, merchants and small businesses” with headline that promotes DIY “Makes marketing child’s play” using Sopenads.

The new Sopenads platform supports 5 print publications: Sud Ouest, L’Eclair, La République des Pyrénées, Charente Libre, Dordogne Libre.

The launch is not only a first for Sud Ouest, but also for iPublish Media: first AdPortal SMB installation in Europe, first site developed to meet GDPR requirements, and first French/English language platform.

Advertisers enjoy a dual-language user experience by toggling a country-specific flag to switch the language between French and English.

“Even the underlying code for AdPortal and Publishing Platform was translated to French (thousands of lines of code). This was the first time we translated the Publishing Platform code,” said James Allen, Senior Sales Engineer at iPublish Media Solutions.

Sud Ouest’s top-shelf marketing and design acumen are accentuated with a clean and simple workflow, along with categorized template previews that have a stylish flare synonymous with French culture.

A video on the home page demonstrates how small businesses can create, schedule and purchase single and multi-channel targeted display ad campaigns 24/7/365.

The Sopenads DIY strategy includes bundled ad packages with a few simple combinations that include 1 and 2 column color print display ads, print and digital display campaigns served on their owned and operated sites, targeted digital display and targeted Facebook campaigns.

Local advertisers also have abundant distribution choices including 42 digital zones that align with 8 zoned print editions in Béarn, Charente, Charente-Maritime, Dordogne, Gironde, Landes, Lot-et-Garonne, and Pays Basque.

The platform is fully integrated with the Sud Ouest advertising system and Ingenico billing system, as well as third-party platforms, Google Ad Manager and Facebook. The Facebook interface even shows advertisers their potential reach based on duration and geo location.

The result is a self-guided and automated workflow where businesses can design, order and publish multi-channel display ad campaigns on their own.

Project managers from Sud Ouest who acted as co-creators of the site include Jean-Bernard Fourthon, IT; Katia Doublet, Customer Relations Center Manager, Delphine Taillade, Interface Queen, and Christelle Laborde, Customer Success Manager.

“This project reflects our desire to serve our communities better by providing a better way for small businesses to purchase advertising using a single, easy to use interface,” said Katia Doublet.

For iPublish, the launch is only the latest initiative to help more than 700 newspapers fulfill their mission: “Any Ad. Any Time Anywhere.”

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