There was just one chief technology officer (CTO) on the Mediaweek 100 Power List this year – News Corp Australia’s Julian Delany (pictured).
The CTO of Australia’s biggest news publisher is no stranger to Mediaweek readers for his long media career. Before being promoted to CTO, Delany was in charge of growing the news.com.au audience first as general manager and was then given a wider brief across all the News Corp digital properties as managing director News Digital Networks.
Delany made our 100 Power List because in his current role he continues to help make some of Australia’s most-read content available to all Australians.
See also: News Corp new look: Julian Delany on revamps of digital metro mastheads
Describing the key parts of his new role, Delany told Mediaweek: “I’ve got three areas of work to focus on – technology, digital product, and data.”
While he is no longer working at the “coalface” of news.com.au or the big Food Corp brands (including Taste.com.au), Delany noted, “The team and I are still accountable for how the digital product looks and feels.”
The learnings that Delany brought from his previous role have been critical to his success as CTO.
“When somebody asks me what I do, I still say I work in media, not I work in technology.”
Sports platform Code is one of the recent News Corp Australia initiatives that called on Delany and his team to facilitate the launch.
“Our teams are embedded in with all of the different groups that bring new sites together. What you’ve got to remember is that we just don’t work on the technical challenges. We work closely with editorial, sales teams, marketing teams, a whole gamut of people bring a new site together.
“Everyone’s got to be in sync, to make sure that we get the right outcome.”
Code and The Oz
“Some of our content is in front of the paywall for Code, because it’s new to enable trial for the brand. The deep content, and particularly the exclusive Code sports content is behind the paywall.”
A more recent digital launch was The Oz. A product aimed at younger readers published by The Australian.
“It’s quite a distinctive strategy for that team. And quite a different product experience.”
Both Code and The Oz differ from the editorial experience Delany drove previously.
“The brief at news.com.au was to create reach – make it massive, make it big and retain its credibility in doing so and commercialise the audience.
“News.com.au is an ad model as opposed to a subscription model at the metro dailies and The Australian.
“Audience growth is a big focus for us as a company, and the way in which I can help shape that product is by using some of the learnings I’ve had not just at news.com.au, but with Taste.com.au as well.”
Delany’s responsibility is linked still to all the content websites, but not the editorial. The CTO and his team need to make sure they the sites are all online 24/7 and have the capacity to handle big crowds.
As mentioned at the top of this article, the three key pillars of what Delany and his team look after is technology, digital and data. “We are known internally as TDD,” he explained.
“A big company like ours, we’ve got the capability to flex as required. We are handling massive traffic every day here across the network and it’s quite consistent.
“The demand for news is just insatiable.”
Delany said recent audience trends continue in the way they have now for many tears. “Mobile continues to be dominant. What is interesting is the stickiness of our audiences when they go into an app. We see a lot more pages consumed and more engagement from people who use The Daily Telegraph app, the Herald Sun app or The Australian app. They are our super users.”
While apps build audience, people visiting through web browsers continues to be important too.
Whether a new product gets both a website and an app depends on the launch strategy and the product.
Delany: “With Code we launched with both mobile web and an app. But with The Oz we were trying to get that up and going as fast as we could.”
Shoppable commerce
A big focus for the tech team is to help implement shoppable digital solutions for clients.
“We are doing a lot of work with Pippa Leary and her team to bring to life their vision to make the most of the big audiences we have got. We all believe there is a lot of opportunity [with shoppable solutions] for us there in the future.”
News Corp has also been making major strides in organising the data it collects from its customers. “While many people know data is important, some don’t quite understand the work that is required to make sure the data strategy does what you want it to do.
“We’re doing a lot of work. Just getting it out, organising and arranging our data, getting it in a place whereby we are able to be entrepreneurial with it. When companies like ours have a lot of data, sometimes our stakeholders like client teams, or consumer marketing teams, or even our finance and HR teams, can’t actually use it optimally.
“This is a big piece of work we’re doing which sets us up for the future. We’re already seeing some great benefits coming out of our data strategy.
See also: News Corp Australia’s D_Coded unveils Shoppable Video Advertising