Johnston Press PLC Share News (JPR)

Yorkshire Post and Scotsman publisher Johnston Press has formed a new digital advertising platform focused on 'local media' together with other regionally focused media businesses.The group has joined forces with Local World, Newsquest and other UK local-focused media businesses to create the 1XL platform, which expects to reach over 17.5m monthly unique users across 800 different websites.Johnson Press chief executive Ashley Highfield said: "1XL should accelerate the growth of our digital revenues and therefore our tipping point, where digital revenue growth overtakes print revenue declines."The 1XL collaboration gives advertisers and their agencies, for the first time, the ability to scale their campaigns through 'mass localisation' and, as such, it is a significant step forward for local media publishers."Newsquest chief executive Henry Faure Walker pointed out the online advertising sector is worth over £2bn every year, "a market hitherto dominated by the likes of Google and Facebook".Shares in Johnston Press were up 1.74% to 160.5p at 11:01 on Wednesday.