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Bauer Media Programmatic

Publishers can get their 'knickers in a twist' over programmatic trading - says Bauer Media group MD Richard Dunmall

By Angela Haggerty | Reporter

April 17, 2014 | 6 min read

A lack of understanding around programmatic trading and the need for more transparency from agencies is seeing some publishers get their “knickers in a twist”, according to Richard Dunmall, group managing director at Bauer Media.

Strategy: Richard Dunmall discussed the way forward for Bauer

Speaking to The Drum following a significant sales restructure at Bauer, Dunmall said the company would be ramping up its programmatic offering in the months ahead, as part of a fresh digital strategy across its brands portfolio, but called for greater transparency from agencies as the market develops.

“There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors around programmatic and for me the principles are quite simple,” he said. “I think publishers get their knickers in a twist about it because they misunderstand what it’s trying to do, and I think a lot of agency groups are perhaps not being as transparent about why they’re doing it, which is that it’s a great commercial model for them as they diversify their services.

“Everyone’s taking a slice of it as well. The market is so over diluted at the moment. There are so many tech companies acting as intermediaries and I think that’s one of the problems. It’s over talked about and exposed.”

He added: “The technology is there to enable reaching a simple goal more effectively, but I think the multitude of people trying to take a slice out of every pound spent are making it more complicated as a result of that.”

While programmatic has so far been a fairly small part of Bauer Media’s strategy, Dunmall said it was growing quickly and greater emphasis would be placed on the method in future.

“Clearly that’s part of a broader market demand and we should be progressive in that respect,” he continued. “It was a small part of our business and it’s growing rapidly but it’s not as big as I would like.

“I think modern publishers, modern content owners are quite embracing of it. If it’s done the right way it makes it easier for agencies to do business with us and find audiences that we have. It’s still a small part of the company in terms of the number of people working on it but I can see that being one of our fastest growing areas for sure.”

According to Dunmall, the company’s recently restructured sales team will make the Bauer “easier to do business with” by pulling its brand propositions more closely together and becoming more digitally-friendly.

Dunmall will lead Bauer’s new leadership team, which includes Simon Kilby as head of marketplace, who joins from Absolute Radio; Clare Chamberlain as head of creative and brand solutions; Lucy Banks as executive creative director; and Rebecca Eaves as commercial marketing director. Bauer is also recruiting for a head of client development, head of creative suite and head of operations.

“In a week we engage with 22 million people across all of our brands and we are looking at how we monetise our content and how we bring it together,” he said.

“At the moment, with our range of magazines and radio stations, we can be quite complex to do business with, so we’re setting ourselves up to be more effective and efficient and to align ourselves with our customer base rather than just our products.”

Dunmall added that vast changes in digital had brought a period of change across the board, and one that clients as well as publishers were still settling in to. However, while he said it was important to remain open to change, he added that Bauer was now in the early stages of pursuing a refreshed vision for the future.

“Clients have been through quite a big change over the last three or four years,” he continued. “Us being able to mirror that and mirror the way consumers behave, which is now much more driven by the integration across channels rather than the specific channels themselves, is the right thing to do from a market perspective and this is our opportunity to do that.

“In terms of the broader vision, how we bring the unique talent within Bauer’s buildings closer to the commercial world is part of a much bigger, broader ambition for us to realise our potential, our size and our scale.

“We are clear that being easier to do business with, making our content more shareable, digitally distributed and monetisable in the modern, digitally creative world is absolutely our ambition and we have the raw materials to do that. That doesn’t happen overnight, it will take a while.”

Dunmall said that Bauer’s recently launched online women’s lifestyle magazine The Debrief was an example of the kind of product they think will prove successful in the digital climate. The brand, which focuses heavily on native advertising as a source of revenue, has inspired ideas of for other products using a similar model which Bauer is currently looking at.

Meanwhle, The Drum is working with Quantcast to conduct a survey into the digital skillsgap that the industry currently faces.

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