The Mill is an award-winning digital newspaper and Manchester’s quality source of news and local features. Since setting up in 2020, we’ve grown a loyal audience of followers — with 3,500 paying subscribers and 58,000 people now reading our journalism.
We have received coverage in newspapers like The New York Times, The Guardian, The Times and The Telegraph and have been featured several times on BBC Radio 4, whose Today programme described our readership as “the likes of council leaders and chief executives and it means the Mancunian movers and shakers pay attention to The Mill.” These are some of the most influential people working in Manchester, with our Monday briefing setting the tone of the city’s conversations for the week. Our readers are thoughtful, creative, and keenly interested in what’s going on in our city.
Advertising with The Mill is completely different to other local media. We don’t use irritating pop-ups that readers desperately scroll past. And we don’t put adverts alongside annoying clickbait. Instead, our uncluttered format gives you the chance to properly get your message across.
So how does it work? We guarantee everyone who sponsors us five things:
- High up on the briefing. Your slot will be one of the first things our readers see.
- A big picture. Give us your best photograph and we’ll include it — helping you to show and tell what makes your organisation so great
- Compelling text. We’ll work with you to craft a paragraph in our voice. This ensures it feels like an integrated part of the briefing, and drives up click-through to links.
- Straight to readers’ inboxes. While our stories can be read online, the vast majority (>90%) access them via e-mail, a more personal form of engagement.
- Positive brand association. We’ve grown our committed readership by consistently producing well-researched and balanced journalism. Sponsorship with us will elevate your brand in our readers’ minds.
Here’s an example of how it looks (view it in context here).
Recent sponsors have included RHS Garden Bridgewater, The Financial Times, the Science and Industry Museum and The Davis Cup.
Our advertising works because of the trusted relationship we have with our readers. Advertisers notice much higher engagement levels with us than on social media. Tom Cheesewright, from Pomona Partners, explained his decision to advertise with the Mill in a Linkedin post, noting the early success of the campaign “In the fifteen minutes between the Mill going out and me writing this we’ve had a spike in web traffic and three people subscribe to our mailing list”.
Throughout the UK we have five sister publications, in London, Sheffield, Liverpool, Glasgow and Birmingham. As well as working with advertisers at the local level, we also operate at the national level across all six of our publications. If you want to reach the most engaged readers in the UK’s biggest cities, click here to view our Mill Media advertising home page.
If you’d like to explore running a campaign, and want to understand what that means in terms of rates, timings, etc. then please e-mail grace@millmediaco.uk to start a conversation.