Exclusive
Some of Google’s most senior UK commercial bosses are set to exit their roles as the country’s regional boss Debbie Weinstein executes a restructure.
Multiple sources have confirmed to The Media Leader that Matt Bush, managing director of Agencies, Partners and Creative at Google and Philip Miles, UK sales MD of YouTube, are among a tranche of executives that have already left or are set to depart their existing roles.
Bush and Miles are some of the UK media industry’s most well-known commercial operators, having worked at the tech behemoth for around a decade.
Weinstein, who has been in charge of Google’s UK operations since March, is understood to have begun communicating job changes within the business since last week. She replaced Ronan Harris, the long-serving UK & Ireland boss who left for Snap last year.
It is thought that the changes are strategic in nature and not due to cost-cutting, and that the restructure is due to be completed in September.
Bush has been at Google for 13 years, having joined from Incisive Media for an agency-facing sales role. He has been the company’s lead sales liaison between Google and the UK’s biggest media-buying agencies since 2014.
Miles, meanwhile, has been at Google for the longest stint, having joined as an agency lead in 2007. He went on to lead DoubleClick, Google’s adtech platform, for five years and then Google Marketing Platform. He has held senior sales roles at YouTube since 2019.
Separately, David McMurtie, Google’s veteran UK & Ireland head of publishers, has also left the business after 15 years. McMurtie joined Doubleclick two years before it was acquired by Google in 2008 and announced his departure in a LinkedIn post on 2 August.
“Digital transformation in the News industry is by no means complete, but the industry is in better shape today than many would have predicted 10 years ago,” he said.
Google did not comment.
The company’s parent business Alphabet reported a 7% increase revenue rose 7% to $74.6bn in its second-quarter earnings last month. That was the fourth straight quarter in which Alphabet reported growth in the single digits.
While still growing, the tech giant is having to reckon with a pullback in digital ad spending that reflects ongoing concerns about the economy. Analysts don’t expect Alphabet’s growth to hit double digits again until the fourth quarter of 2023.
