The Bridge, News UK’s commercial division, today announces the creation of V-Studio, a full-service digital creative team specialising in creating, editing and publishing vertical mobile formats. The service will help brands and advertisers create shareable and creative mobile-first campaigns, to maximise video engagement across the complete News UK brand portfolio.

Leveraging Bridge Studio’s vast digital, creative and data-driven expertise, V-Studio will initially offer brands seven V-formats (see image below), repurposing pre-existing video assets into short-form interactive vertical formats, edits and 360 experiences. New vertically framed video content will also be shot in-house by V-Studio or sourced via Storyful user-generated content. Each V-format will optimise content for auto-play environments, eliminate black spaces above and below in portrait mode, and create a more tailored experience for video and creative content for mobile audiences.

V-Studio will also be able to provide effective personalisation using invaluable context and location data, targeting News UK’s highly engaged readership with dynamic content. Branded content can be distributed across all of News UK’s digital and social platforms, including The Sun Online, Unruly, and The Times and The Sunday Times in addition to off-platform environments.

Milton Elias, Head of Mobile and Video at News UK, said: “Recently, the industry has witnessed a fundamental shift in the way that people consume media, especially via mobile channels. Whilst this has offered innovative ways for brands to reach audiences via their most personal devices, it also presents various creative challenges in a world where video content is still primarily produced for much larger horizontal screens.

“Given that virtually everyone uses their smartphones in portrait mode most of the time, it’s imperative that brand messages are tailored to maximise impact and engagement. We know that the vast majority of online visits across The Sun and The Times happen on mobile, and V-Studio provides a great canvas for brands to better engage their target audiences on our platforms and beyond.”