Bauer Media bolsters digital arm with senior appointments

Matthew Hobbs will join Bauer in September as chief technology officer.

Bauer Media UK, responsible for brands including Grazia, Heat and Absolute Radio, has announced four new senior appointments as it looks to strengthen its digital division, Xcel Media.

Argos’ Matthew Hobbs will join the company in September as its new chief technology officer, while Viacom International Media Networks’ Akhil Suchak has been appointed head of social across all Bauer Media brands.

Satpal Chagger is to become Bauer’s new head of analytics following a seven year career in data science, tasked with driving efforts to build a fully algorithmic ‘API-first’ data science engine and proprietary analytics software services for Bauer.

Hibu’s Christian Westcott will head up Bauer’s search team where he will oversee the driving of natural search traffic across UK and US properties.

All new appointments will report to Bauer Media’s digital managing director, Sam Jones, who said: “I’m thrilled at the world class talent joining our digital team, arriving at a time of huge growth in our digital audience, clients, products and investment, as well as a footprint that already measures 22m monthly unique users and 23m monthly listening hours.

“Working with and developing world class digital talent is a number one priority for us and I look forward to the team developing further this year.”