rxdxt: November 2009

Pasted interview from NMA.co.uk - front page interview with me.

Disruption through innovation is the philosophy of Richard Titus, head of digital at the Daily Mail , who has ambitious plans for new partnerships, hyperlocal sites and mobile

curriculum vitae
•   Name
Richard Titus
•   Title
CEO, Associated Northcliffe Digital
•   Age
41
•   Education
2001-02 Management development for entrepreneurs, Anderson School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles
•   Career
1993-94 Director of A&R and production, Moonshine Music
1994-96 Director of new media and theatrical line producer, Motion Picture Corporation of America
1996-98 Founder, president and CEO, Tag Media
1998-99 MD, Razorfish Los Angeles 1999-2001 VP of strategic investments and VP of strategic business development, Razorfish
2001-06 Co-founder and president, Plinyminor
2001-07 Vice-chairman, New Media Council; founding board member, Producers Guild of America
2002-04 Founder, president and
CEO, Schematic
2004-07 Co-founder, vice-chairman and president, Schematic
2005-06 Executive producer, Who Killed the Electric Car?
2007 Controller of user experience and design, BBC Future Media & Technology
2007-08 Board of directors, Your Truman Show
2008-09 Controller, future media, audio, music and mobile, BBC Future Media & Technology
2007-present Board of directors, Mobile Entertainment Forum

Richard Titus isn’t your standard digital head. He’s a film producer, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, a former VP of digital agency Razorfish and a committed environmentalist. Now CEO at Associated Northcliffe Digital (AND), reporting to Associated Newspapers group MD Kevin Beatty, Titus has impressive credentials and isn’t shy about his achievements. Six month into his new role, he claims to work out of love rather than necessity.

“I’m not very good when unemployed,” he admits. He took six months off after Razorfish during which he built a new house and played video games but became bored. “I love building things and effecting great change.”

Disruption through innovation: it’s a message he repeats throughout our interview. The term has been a key theme of his career and informs his strategy for AND.

AND is the digital consumer division of Daily Mail &; General Trust, operating the digital properties of Associated Newspapers and Northcliffe Media and running their classifieds sites. Mail Online, Metro and Loopylove are among its portfolio of more than 150 sites.

Titus came on board because he saw potential in the AND marketplaces, such as dating, car purchasing at Motors.co.uk and job-hunting via Jobsite. The AND strategy is to create content and services around some of a consumer’s most critical life stages. “These create real value for consumers,” he says, claiming that AND is first, second or third in each of these markets.

He has a strong track record of innovation. He started agencies Tag Media and Schematic, and had a variety of roles at the BBC after director of Future Media & Technology Erik Huggers invited him on board in July 2007. As controller of user experience, Titus was instrumental in taking the BBC home page from “one of the worst to one of the market leaders”.

By the time he left the BBC, Titus was controller of audio, music and mobile for BBC Future & Media and had relaunched the Corporation’s mobile site to include more personalisation features (nma 12 March 2009).
One of the biggest areas of innovation for publishers is charging models. But while others, such as News International and Independent News & Media, are investigating pay walls, AND’s focus is on ad funding using its ad network and setting up partnerships. This means finding opportunities for collaboration across the portfolio and finding new verticals. One such area is travel. “It’s a huge opportunity. If I want to book a vacation, it’s an inefficient market. Should we be in broad discount travel? The opportunities are endless.”

Very much closer to home, AND’s hyperlocal strategy, Local People, established before Titus joined, is one of the areas he’s most proud of. The publisher has launched 32 community sites in places which have populations of between 10,000 and 50,000 and no local paper, such as Falmouth and Bideford (nma 2 July 2009). The sites encourage the local community to chat with each other and write and publish their own stories on local issues.
“We’re seeing a phenomenal amount of user engagement,” says Titus. “It’s an opportunity to be game-changers, especially compared with our competitors, if we can capture local communities and provide opportunities for local businesses to engage and create trust.”

He gives the example of when he moved to London and wanted to find out where was the best butcher. “It would have been useful to have a local community site to help me find one nearby.” He says the hyperlocal strategy has been successful, basing this on the number of users, average engagement and repeat visits.

Another area key of AND’s strategy is partnerships. Its used-car site Motors.co.uk partnered with Bauer Media’s Parker’s, the car-buying advice site, in July to offer a selection of used cars. The digital unit has also signed a deal with Johnston Press to become the supplier of online recruitment across its sites, such as Beverley Guardian and Scarborough Evening News. Despite some of its most recent deals being with competitors, AND sees such partnerships as widening the reach of its digital portfolio. Titus says, “There’s nothing wrong with them, we should be partnering as much as building or buying.'

As well as partnerships, mobile is another platform he sees as crucial. “It’s my expectation that every one of my portfolio businesses will have a mobile manifestation by the end of the year.” He believes all AND publications should have some kind of mobile presence, adding this is also key to its hyperlocal strategy.

Display is an area AND has made strides in. While Titus is tight-lipped about the publisher’s foray into this space - which includes handling sales for all its online properties and third-party sites such as Hellomagazine.com (nma 3 July 2009) and remnant inventory across Independent.co.uk - he believes the network market is seriously undervalued.
“The challenge with networks is scale and technology. The UK average CPMs are a fraction of those in the US and even Slovakia, which doesn’t make sense,” says Titus.

He’s also not that impressed with behavioural targeting, arguing it hasn’t been exploited properly. “Why do I still see a ton of advertising not relevant to me with all my publicly available information? It’s inefficient.”
Looking to the future, the Californian is aiming for the business to start thinking of itself as both global and local. And, of course, the pioneer is launching a review of its environmental activities to make sure AND has a sustainable green focus.