The AOP Digital Publishing Awards are specifically designed to celebrate the work of the individuals and teams who fuel the success of the UK’s digital publishing sector and Bauer Xcel truly made their mark at the ceremony.
 
The Audience Development Team, headed up by Ian Betteridge, were commended by the judges for the scale and quality of the work they completed with such a small team which saw them successfully migrate Grazia, Heat and Closer from their former home on the lifestyle.one portal site to new dedicated brand sites.
 
This involved the technical challenge of undoing several years of complex redirects from the original merger of the brands, as well as developing a post-migration content strategy which drove more page views than ever before.
 
The judges said, “In recognition of the ambition and scale of their task, for demonstrating a well thought-out plan and for undertaking such a complex approach with such a small team.”
 
The Bauer Xcel AdOps team, headed up by Nat Francis, were awarded Digital Advertising Operations Team of the year, recognising the complete restructure they underwent delivering world class service to partners, advertisers and sales teams – all while handling two major technology projects.
 
The team was structured around three coherent parts: implementation; delivery and enablement all to support a cross-platform sales team cover digital effectively, as well as print and radio, and this had to integrate both direct and programmatic. The team delivered a year-on-year increase in programmatic revenue of 279%, further strengthened internal and external relationships by providing a high quality service. 
 
Congratulations to the teams across Bauer Xcel who were involved in these successes!