An advertising team at regional publisher Johnston Press has won an award for its online ads.

The company’s ad operations team was named Digital Advertising Operations Team of the Year at the Association of Online Publishers Awards, which were held in London last week.

The team, which is responsible for trafficking thousands of online ads each week, beat off competition from the likes of The Telegraph and Trinity Mirror.

Last year, the team brought in a new process which aimed to dramatically increase the number of advertisers who took a digital component, without requiring an increase in the size of the team, and claims this helped drive an increase in local online display revenues of almost 50pc in 2012.

Henry Faure Walker, the publisher’s digital and business development director, said: “We’ve put a lot of work into ensuring that we maximise the advertiser response from our online network.

“This award is well deserved recognition for the diligence and innovation of our digital Ad Ops team, who now traffic and optimise over 6,000 online ads a week across our local websites.”