New York-based PolicyMic is one of the newest members of Ideas People Media. The digital publisher pegs itself as a "next generation news and politics platform". This video will help you to understand how thought leaders on the site compete for "mics".

Co-founder Christopher Altcheck had this to say about the new partnership, "PolicyMic, the fastest growing news site for millennials is thrilled to be working with Ideas People Media. We are engaging 20-somethings and 30-somethings in thoughtful discussions about current events and share Ideas People's passion for high quality debate. Our readership is smart, global, and influential and is a perfect fit for The Economist brand." 

The Economist ad network targets The Week and The Spectator in the UK 

The Economist Group bolstered its ad network business, Ideas People Media, when it launched in the UK last month.

The digital business was set up in the US two years ago and now brings together more than 60 global, like-minded news publications to enable marketers to reach thought leaders and business decision makers on a wider scale.

What was the initial thinking behind Ideas People Media? We wanted to provide a new offering in the digital space for advertising solutions, so we created an alliance of high quality, like-minded news publications to enable marketers to reach curious, opinionated and influential viewers at scale.

The reality is very few publications have scale on their own, that's why we looked to create this offering which joins up some of the best in the publication world with the best of the network world.

We have taken quality publications like The Economist, the New Statesman and Prospect in the UK and in the US we leverage Technology Review, New York Magazine and many others. All these publications focus mainly on 'slow media', so it's investigation, opinion and analysis. We bring together more than 60 publications that have an affinity with The Economist.

What kind of scale does the network enable marketers to reach? On the scale side, bringing together all these publications helps marketers reach 25m people in the US, 3m in the UK and more than 40m globally.

How are you looking to extend your reach in the UK? I think the challenge is not to look only at absolute reach. We want to make sure we reach our particular audience, which has a very specific mindset. It's not a mainstream audience profile.

Depending on global variations, we estimate that this population is 10-15% within each market, so that is roughly what we aim for. We are looking for thought leaders and business decision makers.

Our goal is not to grow just for the sake of growing, but to keep building the alliance with high quality publications, mostly legacy brands and magazines.

Are you looking to get more UK publishers to join the alliance? We would love to be able to work with publications like The Spectator and The Week, so that gives you a flavour of the brands we are trying to bring together. Marketers are looking for scale when they invest in online advertising. Bringing together many like-minded publications like this helps us to compete with big digital brands like CNN and the BBC, which are a great source of investment for marketers.

How many UK publishers do you estimate will join the network over the next year? Around five would be a good target, but it will depend on the audience they bring. The reality is that with the web it doesn't matter where a publication is based it is more about the traffic they can reach. They have to bring something to the mix.

Publishers in the UK have been more receptive than they were in the US two years ago, which represents a turn in the market. It shows that the more the media world is evolving the more challenging it is to survive online alone when you are a very niche publication. That's why I think publications are more open to joining an alliance now. A few years ago it was much more challenging.

Do you think this alliance strategy could work for more mainstream publishers? To me, the key in any industry is to have a focus and a clear value proposition. There are so many companies within the digital landscape now and everyone does everything. The challenge today is to come up with a very clear proposition.

As we focus on brand and corporate advertisers, we can target a niche audience in an environment where they are truly thinking. That's why we leverage not only display advertising, but video inventory and mobile traffic too. About 25% of our audience now comes from mobile browsing, which is not surprising as we have a 'news drunk' population and people that are always connected. Our audience doesn't play games in their downtime, they read news.

How important is it for publishers to collaborate?
Everybody has different tactics. Many publishers are starting to do some retargeting, but when they do that it only solves their inventory problem, not the reach problem. If you really want to solve your reach problem you have to start working with like-minded publications. Sometimes they will be competitors and that can be a challenge, but you have to put the competition piece to one side. Don't stop selling directly, but create a product which helps you to get a bigger part of the pie.

The publishers we work with now do more than advertising, which generates added revenue. As we operate in a cohesive environment we can explore more ideas. Our publishers are bartering on house ads now, for example, so they can cross promote their circulation products and trade for free on house ads.

Going forward we are creating a private marketplace for video content where the publications we work with can put videos on the platform for other publications within the network to access, so suddenly publications can also share their video content. It's cross market syndication and advertising.

What has been the biggest challenge since launching the network? The first challenge was to convince publishers to get on board and work together. Most are facing the same challenges on direct sales and as I was coming from a direct sales background at The Economist I could really share that with them. It did help that we came to them as Ideas People Media, and not The Economist though as everyone joined the alliance under a third party brand.