CUE news platform

A single platform powering unique brands and tomorrow's news.

TL;DR

Launching and maintaining mobile news apps for 15+ brands was slow, costly, and complex.
Unified all brands on one scalable platform, CUE, each with its own identity and experience.
Reduced costs and technical debt by reusing code and components.
Cut time-to-market for new apps from months to weeks.Onboarded multiple brands in just weeks, making rapid rollout the new standard.
Internal teams now own and release new features directly, without external support.

About Mediahuis

Mediahuis is a major European media group active in publishing, distribution, TV, radio, and digital media across Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Germany.

Services

Digital vision & strategy Product management Solution & application architecture Native mobile engineering Integration engineering Testing & QA Support

Project

2021 - present

1

shared platform now supports all Mediahuis news brands

80%

reduction in time-to-market for new apps (from months to weeks)

15+

branded apps launched from a single codebase

November Five are very knowledgeable and very pragmatic. Their code is good and the quality is high. They often over-deliver, coming up with solutions or additional functionality that we have not requested but which is really beneficial.

Geert Kempen, Platform Owner

The challenge

The fragmented app trap.

Mediahuis operates dozens of news brands across Europe, each with its own audience and editorial identity. As mobile became the primary channel for news consumption, the company faced mounting pressure to deliver high-quality apps tailored to each brand and audience. But building and maintaining separate apps for every brand led to rising costs, duplicated effort, and increasingly complex maintenance. With every new launch, it became harder to deliver features quickly and keep up with the pace of digital news. Mediahuis wanted a unified, scalable mobile platform that could serve dozens of brands and markets without sacrificing each brand’s unique identity. The challenge was simple: how do you make a platform that works for many brands without forcing them all to feel the same?

The Solution

A scalable multi-brand mobile platform that supports uniqueness.

We worked with Mediahuis to build a mobile platform that serves all their brands from one codebase. With a simple answer: architecture. Share the core. Let each brand customize what matters to them. This is harder than it sounds. Most teams end up with a mess of platform-specific code that defeats the purpose. But we didn't. With a future-proof shared codebase, development time dropped from months to a sprint. Adding a new brand became routine. Their team could now ship updates without waiting for external developers. And do that with the level of flexibility each brand requires to maintain what it stands for. It works because it's built for growth, not just launching something once. The true win? The platform handles what readers actually care about, delivering the experience they want regardless of the news brand they consume, getting them to come back over and over again. It works because it's built for tomorrow’s readers.

Success drivers

Product mindset unlocks sustainable scale.
Knowledge transfer as a product, not an afterthought.
Pragmatism over perfection for rapid results.

success driver 1

Product mindset unlocks sustainable scale.

We didn’t just build apps; we approached Mediahuis’s challenge as product builders. Instead of treating each brand as a separate project, we architected a platform designed for long-term evolution, balancing shared infrastructure with the flexibility for each brand to keep its unique voice. This shift from project delivery to platform thinking enabled true scale and proves to be the stage for a future-proof digital ecosystem.

Success driver 2

Knowledge transfer as a product, not an afterthought.

From day one, we designed the platform and our process to empower Mediahuis’s internal team. By embedding with their developers, sharing our methods, and iterating side-by-side, we ensured sustainable ownership. Today, Mediahuis’s own team can roll out new brands and features independently—proof that true enablement is a key to long-term impact.

Success driver 3

Pragmatism over perfection for rapid results.

Instead of chasing theoretical “best practices,” we focused on what would deliver the most value fastest. We reused existing assets, prioritized the most impactful improvements, and flexed our approach as needs changed. This pragmatic mindset cut time-to-market for new apps from months to weeks, making rapid rollout the new standard. Moreover, we established a solid foundation for in-house teams to excel in that shared codebase, being able to independently use and maintain the platform.

success driver 4