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Effective from 1 January, the restructure will position the advertising teams in multi-platform hubs, each with a hub leader reporting to NGN media director Mark Chippendale. Two have been promoted internally: Steve O'Meara, currently NGN paper advertising manager, and communications strategist Richard Smith. A third is in the process of being recruited.

NGN's sales teams currently focus on individual products within the portfolio, such as magazines, newspapers, digital and retail. The online team does not sit with the print sales people.

The new hubs will comprise groups of 16 or 17 staff sitting together, including specialists from each of the products within the portfolio. Team responsibilities will be split by agency.

Chippendale told Media Week: "Consumers tend to engage with brands across a multitude of platforms and most of what we do is to reflect the activity of consumers. If you look at agencies such as Carat, which is fully integrated, you realise that is what we have to do now."

He is confident that the new arrangement can accommodate the wishes of agencies. "If you structure it properly and people retain their specialisms, you can service both the integrated agencies and the traditional agencies. I did something very similar at Sky," he added.

In January 2000, under Chippen-dale's direction, Sky restructured its sales team into a "one-stop shop" to encourage agencies to buy integrated TV, internet, sponsorship and text campaigns. Three teams were pooled from Sky's specialist sales teams.

Chippendale left Sky in 2004 before joining Yahoo! as vice- president of sales for Europe in August 2005. He joined News Group in June, replacing David Emin who went to Mirror Group Newspapers as advertising director. Chippendale's appointment was part of parent company News Corporation's strategy to integrate revenue from newspaper sales, online and mobile.