Israel Hayom is one of the winners of the Google News Initiative's first Innovation Challenge in the Middle East, Turkey & Africa Region, the global tech giant has announced.
The other winners were Haaretz, Ynet, and the start-up company AnyClip.
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Additional winners from other regions were chosen from a total of 527 bids submitted in 35 countries.
According to the GNI: "As part of a vision to make their site a priority choice and set themselves apart, Israel Hayom is developing a loyalty program to create a graduated incentive for the surfer according to their level of engagement. This will mean creating an automatic algorithm-based system that would give surfers points for engaging with the site or the application. The more points the user accumulates, the more rewards they can redeem."
"The future is in digital," said Israel Hayom editor-in-chief Boaz Bismuth. We're proud of the selection of Israel Hayom and the GNI's expression of faith in our paper."
According to Israel Hayom CEO Amir Finkelstein, "We will create value for our readers and advertisers alike. Readers will receive significant benefits in terms of the products they buy, and advertisers will get access to target audiences."
Within the framework of the Google News Initiative, which was first launched in 2018, the global tech giant promised to invest $300 million over a three-year period in projects related to journalism.
Sarah Hartley, the liaison manager for the GNI Innovation Challenges team, wrote: "Finding new and profound ways to create reader activity is a subject that news companies of all sizes are contending with. The GNI's first Innovation Challenge in the Middle East, Turkey & Africa Region yielded numerous approaches to dealing with this issue."
Israel Hayom's website is the largest growing website among the main news sites in Israel. In 2019, the site's traffic increased by nearly 50%, and this rapid growth was carrying over into 2020.
