Friday marks the one-year anniversary of one of last year’s most surprising TV advertising moments: the abrupt exit of Donna Speciale as WarnerMedia ad sales chief. But even more astonishing than the timing of her departure, which came just a week after she had wrapped 2019’s upfront negotiations, is the fact that a full year later, the WarnerMedia ad sales chief position still remains vacant.
The well-regarded Speciale, who had been with the company since 2012, was shown the door after WarnerMedia chief revenue officer Gerhard Zeiler—who had been named four months earlier to oversee Speciale and her team as part of the WarnerMedia affiliates and advertising sales group—decided that the company needed “to change the leadership structure” in order to help the ad sales business “stay at the top and lead the industry,” he wrote in a staff memo at the time.
As Speciale departed, Zeiler said he would lead ad sales as interim president and work with a three-person operational team: Amit Chaturvedi, leading revenue operations, ad innovation, ad product strategy, digital sales planning and digital yield management; Katrina Cukaj, heading up linear strategic planning, research, network partnerships and marketplace image and experience; and Joe Hogan, leading sales, including agency, client, digital, direct response and content partnerships.
Buyers were told at the time that the arrangement would be temporary—but a year later, the company is still working under the same structure, with Hogan—evp of sales and marketing at WarnerMedia—heading up ad sales, but without the official title. And while several buyers stressed to Adweek that the ad sales team has been running smoothly over the past year, they added that they are ready for some clarity about the future of the company, especially with HBO Max’s ad-supported tier set to roll out next year.
Those answers could finally be coming within the next month or two: The company expects to select its next ad sales chief by the end of summer, according to a WarnerMedia source.
The company spoke with several candidates in late 2019, but the search was sidelined earlier this year when Zeiler first learned that AT&T would be consolidating its ad sales units and moving Xandr, its ad-tech unit, into WarnerMedia, under his oversight. At that point, according to the WarnerMedia source, Zeiler shifted his priority to focus on that new structure, which was made public in April. He also had to spend time on Otter Media subsidiary Fullscreen, which was also added to his purview in April.
After taking two months to integrate Xandr into WarnerMedia, Zeiler is ready to turn his attention back to the ad sales chief role. According to the WarnerMedia source, the new hire will likely oversee both the WarnerMedia and the Xandr ad sales teams, which continue to operate separately but now work more closely together under Zeiler. This role will not have oversight of Xandr’s technology teams, which now report to WarnerMedia chief technology officer Richard Tom, who was hired last month.
In April, WarnerMedia also named a new CEO, founding Hulu chief Jason Kilar—replacing John Stankey, who was promoted last fall to president and COO of AT&T and took over this month as company CEO following Randall Stephenson’s retirement—but that appointment had less to do with the hiring delay than the earlier Xandr move.
Who is, and isn’t, in the running
As for who will get the position, the company is still considering internal and external candidates.
The most prominent name associated with the job since last fall has been Jeff Lucas, who until May had been head of North American sales and global client solutions at Verizon Media, and previously oversaw ad sales for Snapchat and Viacom. Many in the industry have long assumed Lucas was a lock for the role, but the deal never crossed the finish line.
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