Four French media groups, Amaury Médias, FigaroMedias, Lagardère Publicité and TF1 Publicité, have launched AdMediaPremium, a private platform to sell the unsold advertising space on their websites, an article on Le Figaro reported.

As the article explains, the aim of this private marketplace is to restore the value of all the advertising on the media companies' websites through joining forces and audience. The four groups in fact have together an audience of 22 million unique visitors per month and a stock of 3 billion web printing.

The advertising rates on websites vary, the article continued to explain. The homepages displays “super premium” advertising, usually sold at high rates directly by the media group, while ads on the other pages, progressively displayed in less visible spaces of the site, have lower rates and are sold by external brokers who sell them to advertisers amongst millions of other unspecified sites. For this reason this huge inventory loses value, the article explains.

Through AdMediaPremium, the four media groups will regain control and value of the entire advertising on the websites putting together these “haute couture” and “ready-to-wear” different advert categories.

A rough economic climate made 2011 a hard year in Britain, both for local business and for local newspapers. But perhaps a problem shared is a problem halved for the two industries, as the Newspaper Society has named the winners of its Local Business Accelerators scheme, which supports new business while promoting local newspaper advertising.

The scheme, launched last year, and described as a "special partnership between your local newspaper and selected businesses in your community", encouraged UK start-ups to apply for a chance to win a three month advertising campaign with their local paper, as well as mentoring from a business expert.

The initiative is backed by Deborah Meaden from Dragon's Den, who will mentor the overall national winner, to be chosen later this year.

The first round of roughly 1,500 winners, who will have their ads hosted by 500 participating local papers, was announced two days ago. The winning companies were congratulated on Twitter by British PM David Cameron, who also acknowledged the local papers that supported the scheme.