There’s an old Toronto newspaper now vying for readers’ attention online; the Toronto Standard launched last week providing daily content focused on all things Toronto.
Originally a newspaper that began in 1848, the updated online version launched last Thursday and covers the life of the city—but not just its home base. “We want to put Toronto in a lager perspective as opposed to looking at the hyper-local,” said editor Christopher Frey. “We’re using Toronto as a platform to talk about cities in general and the challenges they face now… so it’s kind of a city magazine with a foreign desk.”
Coverage includes urban issues as varied as food, design and architecture, he added. Toronto Standard readers can browse the content on a variety of devices. It is designed using a smart liquid layout that uses HTML5 coding with pages that can be “flipped” instead of scrolled.
“We knew we wanted to do something different with the reading experience,” said Frey. “With the liquid layout, even with the homepage if you adjust the size of your browser, you’ll see the page adapt. By creating something on that platform, you create basically one platform that can be accessed from all sorts of different devices and will readjust itself dynamically.”
Frey admits the first couple of months are going to be evolutionary and a bit experimental when it comes to advertising. “To some degree, it’s a conventional advertising experience in terms of big box ads,” he said.
But there are also unique video elements to the site that lend themselves well to advertising. For instance, a video series on local artists that goes beyond the standard one-camera setup is an opportunity for video pre-roll advertising.
Also, because the site’s video series are of proprietary nature, they could also work for more specialized, sponsored relationships.
Frey said Suite 66 is handling Toronto Standard’s ad sales. He added that new features with ad opportunities will be added to the site in the next couple of months.
Toronto Standard is a venture of Queen Street Partners.
