AOP names Tim Faircliff as executive chairman and appoints advisory board to take organisation forward
The Association of Online Publishers (AOP) has named Tim Faircliff as executive chairman and the organisation has created an advisory board to help take it forward.
Executive chairman: Tim Faircliff
Members of the advisory board have been confirmed as Stephen Edwards, Hearst Group sales director; Jo Holdaway, ESI Media director of strategic and commercial data; and Patrick Fuller, group director of Haymarket Consumer Media. Also on the board is Lewis Silkin partner Simon Entwhistle, who will provide guidance on legal issues of increasing concern for publishers, such as privacy.
Speaking to The Drum about his appointment, Faircliff, who served as chairman of the AOP between 2009 and 2011 while he was EMEA general manager for the consumer division at Thomson Reuters, said legal issues, programmatic trading and content marketing were some of the biggest issues ahead for publishers.
“As part of this change to the governance we decided we needed a small group of people to help guide the organisation, and to help guide me,” he said. “Some of those are AOP members – they should be driving it as members – but we’ve also brought in Simon Entwhistle because there are a number of legal challenges that our publisher members face that will require a bit of media know-how.
“Programmatic has definitely risen up the list of priorities because potentially it offers a more efficient way of doing business,” he went on. “That’s not true for every publisher, but for many of them it’s seen as an efficiency driver that enables them to focus on other areas of publishing away from just selling ads.
“Another issue is what good content looks like and how good content works across the range of new platforms. I think that worries publishers. Equally, many of our members are doing fantastic things around their content so it’s both an opportunity and a threat.”
Faircliff replaces John Barnes in the role, who said his time in the position had been a “great privilege”. He will remain at the AOP as part of the advisory board.
Tim Cain, AOP managing director, added: “Under the chairmanship of John Barnes, AOP has delivered a significant contribution supporting premium content digital publishers to drive their businesses forward.
“The creation of the advisory board and the appointment of the new executive chairman brings additional expertise, and now positions us well to further develop the value of AOP to its membership and the digital publishing industry.”
The AOP this year added The Huffington Post and BT to its members.