British media conglomerate Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) is expanding the reach of its leading news brand Daily Mail with a long form video strategy intended to make it the “world’s most popular video publisher”.
The strategy includes production of original content produced through the company’s Global Video Studio and builds on an established social media presence. Daily Mail claims to be the largest news publisher on TikTok with more than 13 million total followers and more than 8 billion views in the past year.
The news was announced at the Cannes Lions advertising festival, where in 2015, Daily Mail hailed launch of its new daily news show as a “game-changer” for the international entertainment business.
DailyMailTV was syndicated across the U.S. from 2017, winning a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Entertainment News Program in 2019 before shuttering in 2022.
According to a spokesperson for Daily Mail, the focus of the new initiative will be YouTube but video content will also publish on the Daily Mail site and other distributed platforms.
“More and more consumers are watching YouTube on their TVs so this strategy is about meeting audiences where they are,” the spokesperson told StreamTV Insider.
The initiative is aimed at tapping more of the growing audience watching on connected TVs, which are in around three quarters of UK households and on which ad spend will likely double in the UK between now and 2028 to £2.94bn ($3.67bn), according to the IAB.
In the U.S. the potential is far larger with advertising investment on CTV expected to grow to reach $24.4 billion in 2025.
Dominic Williams, chief revenue officer of Mail Metro Media, said in a statement: “We’ve already seen huge audience growth across social platforms and have the media ecosystem to support this brand-new proposition, engaging younger and more diverse, as well as existing loyal audiences, with the Daily Mail brand.”
Also announced are the first in a slate of 20 original titles ranging from 15 to 30 minutes and spanning the brand’s mix of politics, showbiz, sports, true crime and update on the British royal family.
The shows include Price of Fame, which reveals how expensive life becomes when you’re famous, Your Body on Sport that delves into the physiology of pro athletes and Expert by Decade, where three people who held the same job at three different times in history explain how that profession has changed, and more.
These series will amplify the publisher’s current video output, which helps deliver over 125 million monthly views on YouTube.
Tony Manfred, global head of video at Daily Mail, said in a statement, “People are obsessed with video, and publishers are extremely well positioned to create and distribute that video across phones, computers and connected TV, on a global scale. We’ve built a team to produce a huge variety of repeatable, identifiable and premium quality shows, to engage millions of views on YouTube and across our distributed platforms.”
Additionally, Daily Mail also says it will offer premium sponsorships, native integrations, commerce focused ‘playlists’ with Q&A and live experiences across its video portfolio.
The Daily Mail Online claims to be the most-read English language newspaper website in the world with approximately 243 million unique visitors.
The Daily Mail newspaper was first published in Britain in 1896.