CEO Richard Titus on new business models and mobile distribution.
As CEO of Associated Northcliffe Digital, Richard Titus is at the sharp end of mobile publishing, and specifically figuring out how a big newspaper publishing group - which includes the Daily Mail and Metro titles - should be tapping into mobile.
He took to the stage at M-Publishing in London today to explain how he sees the market. "Number one, we have to make money," he said. "But it can't just be about making money, or we'd all be making gambling and porn!"
He explained that engagement, trust and identity are all increasingly key, as well as the need to make money from m-publishing ventures. He also said publishers can't afford to be geographically myopic any more.
"Media doesn't exist in geographic barriers any more," he said.
"One of my big fears about globalisation is that when you look at the top ten websites in the UK, all but one of them are American."
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(Titus is American, in case that looks a bit xenophobic in print).
He went on to point out that the Mail's website has a big chunk of US readers, despite the fact that Associated doesn't do any marketing in the States.
Titus also touched on paywalls - "They're about trying to figure out how to monetise something in a new economy where the economics are unsure."
He pointed out that digital is still a very immature market, including monetisation and measurement.
Associated has launched two iPad apps this week: one for the Metro, and one for property site PrimeLocation. Meanwhile, the company's legacy Teletext division has been shifted into app publishing.
"We started with the Apple platforms: iPhone and now iPad, and I said to the team I wanted 15 apps in the first year... They did 15 apps in the first three months, and we've had almost 600,000 downloads in those first three months."
Associated plans to launch 150 apps in the next 12 months on multiple platforms, including iPhone and iPad but also Android and other devices.
Titus was asked about development costs, and the challenge of producing so many in such a short space of time.
"At this point, there are two people who work for DMGT who are mobile developers!" he said. "We use a hybrid of inside/outside development. The cost of the apps can vary from three or four grand to £100,000, depending on the number of platforms you're developing for, and the complexity... You'd be really hard-pressed to spend more than £100,000 on a mobile app."
Titus was also asked about apps versus the mobile web, and he said that the "dirty little secret" is that any app, if properly architected, will use a publisher's existing web infrastructure.
He stressed that for now, the advantage apps have over mobile web is partly about tapping into native device features, but also about storing and sharing content, and accessing it offline.
"The internet is a giant hack on something that was not intended to be used for this," he says. "Apps are more native to the device."
"Currently there's four or five meaningful apps ecosystems that really matter," he added. "We shouldn't rule anything out, there's been no kingmaker yet."
