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AOL UK hires commercial director as aggressive ad push continues

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By Seb Joseph, News editor

May 5, 2015 | 3 min read

AOL UK has appointed former agency sales boss Tom Hosking as its commercial director to lead the sales part of its aggressive play for a larger slice of advertising revenues.

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He assumes responsibility for the advertising revenue of the company's content, video and programmatic properties, which now reach 22 million unique visitors. This includes oversight of the sales offerings for titles like The Huffington Post UK, Engadget and Techcrunch as well as strengthening AOL’s Advertsing.com ad network and premium video platform AOL On.

One of his first tasks will be to help with the rollout of One, the first cross-screen programmatic platform that optmises campaigns from web to TV using integrated multi-touch attribution. It is being pitched to advertisers as a holistic platform to achieve campaign goals across all channels in one simple place, and Hosking’s will look ensure it gathers early momentum.

He joins from Turn where he was sales director and EMEA sales director for global agencies since 2012. Prior to Turn, Hosking was at O2 where he headed its opt-in mobile marketing product O2 More and before that was the sales lead for Windows Live and Massive at Microsoft.

Graham Moysey, head of international, AOL said: “AOL is at the intersection of culture and code, a company built on great content and technology platforms. Our business is also built on great talent, training and mentoring, so Tom’s strong mix of media, programmatic and leadership skills will be a fantastic addition to our established sales team.”

The appointment is the latest in a recruitment drive to support the company’s efforts to forge a stronger advertising proposition in the UK. Last month, it poached Google’s UK director of agency sales Hamish Nicklin as its new managing director for the region, while globally it hired its first head of agency sales.

A core part of the refreshed pitch to advertisers is its expanding ad tech stack, which is being positioned as a tonic to the multi-screen paradox and calls for clearer attribution. It is a similar play to those launched by its larger rivals Google and Facebook though AOL it can offer a more defined link between how people shift between on and offline media.

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