News UK’s commercial arm, The Bridge, has hired Ian Hocking to fill the newly-created role of head of programmatic.
Hocking, who joins from Ad2One where he was eBay’s head of agency and programmatic sales, will work with the publisher’s advertising partners on implementing programmatic campaigns online.
Operating across The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times’ digital properties, he will work with department lead by Oliver Lewis to build relationships with key agencies and clients.
“This appointment is a sign that we’re open for business for agencies and clients that want to run their campaigns programmatically,” said CEO Dominic Carter.
“We’ve got unique and in-depth data about our readers that enable us to offer an unparalleled level of targeting within an influential and engaged audience.”
The creation of a head of programmatic role comes as News UK focuses its digital strategy around four pillars – video, programmatic, mobile and branded content.
Part of this strategy will involve linking readers’ content consumption to their purchase habits, hoping to provide advertisers with an engaged audience on premium digital inventory.
“With nearly 21m unique users on The Sun’s digital properties and over 5.5m million on The Times and Sunday Times, News UK brings together a large premium audience and rich data set and is consequently well-positioned to offer great value to advertisers at this pivotal moment in the evolution of digital trading,” said Hocking.
“Working with our advertising partners we’re engaging in strategic discussions to enable the targeting of these deeply engaged, influential audiences using programmatic approaches.”
