ESI Media appoints Blair Tapper as its new North American lead

Cristina Blanaru Business, People

ESI Media today announced the appointment of Blair Tapper to the role of SVP, North America. Tapper brings 14 years’ publishing industry experience to the role, having held roles at companies such as Meredith, XO Group, Condé Nast and Bauer Media. Most recently, Blair was VP Brand Partnerships, East Coast at the Daily Mail, where she oversaw the East Coast Direct sales team responsible for display, video, social, and programmatic revenue.

She will be responsible for devising and driving commercial strategy in the North American market, building on ESI Media’s growth across The Independent and Evening Standard digital portfolio.

Tapper will be focused on further expansion of the existing programmatic business, as well as responsible for building revenues across branded content, creative solutions and events. She will build out the existing commercial team, currently based in New York, whilst evaluating potential future expansion into other US cities.

Tapper starts this month and will report into Andrew Morley, CDRO, with all US commercial employees reporting into her.

Andrew Morley, Chief Digital Revenue Officer at ESI Media:

The US market is a significant commercial opportunity for us. We already have an established commercial platform on which to grow our North America business. We also have the benefit of seeing exponential audience growth in the past twelve months. Blair’s outstanding experience in the region makes her the perfect person to supercharge our North American success. We know there is huge demand globally for trusted and authentic journalism, which gives the Independent and Evening Standard real commercial desirability.

Tapper:

I am hugely excited by the global ambitions of the Independent and Evening Standard teams. The time is now for such quality content and there is a major opportunity for these heritage brands in the US market and beyond.

Since going digital only in 2016, The Independent has grown its audience to 89.9 million global browsers (Adobe Omniture). Standard.co.uk currently attracts 24.8M global unique browsers (Adobe Omniture).

ESI Media is the commercial division of the Evening Standard, The Independent and London Live. ESI Media has a monthly cross-platform UK reach of 26m adults. The Evening Standard is read by 1.2m people every day and the Independent is visited by over 80m global unique browsers each month.