The new alliance, Total London, will specifically target the London market and is likely to be up and running by next month.
Outdoor players Titan and Clear Channel, as well as Global Radio, are thought likely to be involved in the tie-up, which will mirror commercial links-ups such as the RSVP Partnership, which includes Global Radio and IPC, and the Time Warner Advertising Council, which houses UK businesses such as AOL and IPC.
The RSVP partnership, set up in 2004, is a commercial alliance between Global Radio, Viacom Brand Solutions and IPC Ignite, which has signed deals with the likes of Sony Ericsson.
However, the Time Warner UK Advertising Council has failed to strike a deal since its inception in October 2007, despite being made up of IPC Media, Turner Broadcasting, AOL UK, Time and Fortune magazines and Warner Bros.
The move by the Standard, now under the ownership of Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev, is its latest bid to claw back advertisers from the free London Lite and thelondonpaper. It is giving out copies of the title in the early evening from key locations and has signed a deal with Transport for London, which allows Londoners to buy half-price copies of the paper when they show their Oyster card.
Jon O'Donnell, deputy advertising director at the Evening Standard, said: "We have to be much less linear in how we answer clients' briefs nowadays. The Standard is synonymous with London, so inevitably clients come to us looking for a London solution. The old way is to look solely within your portfolio to find the response, but the better answer might be a mixture of press, radio and outdoor, for example."
.jpg)
.jpg)