CNN International Commercial (CNN International) has tapped its long-time sales agent Adspace Sales to develop branded content and custom advertising solutions for Canadian clients.
Adspace Sales has established a three-person Toronto office headed by Hiba Ahmad, who has worked with the company for the past eight years and recently relocated to Canada from Dubai. Ahmad will work with the CNNIC North America team, headed by sales director Irina Shames.
CNN International has a longstanding relationship with Adspace Sales, having worked with the company in countries throughout Africa and Central Asia for more than 20 years. Adspace Sales has primarily worked with tourism boards and airlines in those regions.
Ahmad told Marketing that Adspace planned to focus on Canadian clients in the travel and tourism sector, where CNN had built numerous bespoke marketing solutions for clients.
“We’re seeing a lot of Canadian brands looking to target U.S. consumers, so that’s what we’re going to start with,” said Ahmad.
She said Adspace Sales was working on “a few” deals with Canadian clients, but declined to identify specific companies because the deals have not yet been formalized. She said the programs would go live before the end of the year.
CNN International offers a variety of dedicated online properties featuring television crossovers including CNN Travel, CNN Style, CNN Money and the upcoming CNN Tech, set to launch in October 2016.
Its digital advertising solutions include native and programmatic advertising, as well as sponsored content on its socially distributed video network Great Big Story. Launched in late 2015, Great Big Story is currently attracting more than 40 million views a month according to AdWeek.com.
The company’s content partners include the airline Cathay Pacific, whose “Life Well Travelled” campaign included a weekly TV segment and online content, and the “Culinary Journeys” program for Turkish Airlines that included a monthly 30-minute program.
CNN boasts a significant global audience, with distribution in a reported 425 million households and more than 3 billion pageviews a month. In Canada, CNN.com attracts 3.1 million unique visitors and 94 million pageviews per month.
Its online audience is 58% male, with 64% in the adult 18-54 demographic and 34% boasting a yearly household income of more than $100,000.
