Dentsu Aegis Network Reorganizes Leadership Team With Trio of C-Suite Appointments
A new chief programmatic officer, chief data officer and chief technology officer
Dentsu Aegis Network is reorganizing its leadership team with the introduction of three new C-suite roles.
The network promoted Nathan Carver to chief technology officer, Akash Jairath to chief data officer and Christina Mohebbi to chief programmatic officer. Mohebbi previously served as managing director at Dentsu Aegis Network programatic trading solution Amnet, where Carver acted as chief technology officer and Jairath as chief data officer. They will now work across Dentsu Aegis Network’s media agencies, which includes Carat, dentsuX, iProspect, Posterscope and Vizeum, to align data and technology solutions.
As chief programatic officer, Mohebbi will be responsible for managing Dentsu Aegis Network’s programmatic services across each of its agency brands, as well as direct client relationships through Accordant Media. She will also be responsible for ensuring all programatic experts within the network operate under a consistent set of best-in-class data and technology providers in conjunction with Dentsu Aegis Network’s proprietary data platform M1.
Carver will be tasked with overseeing the technology relationships driving Dentsu’ media tools across all of its media agency brands as chief technology officer.
As chief data officer, Jairath will be responsible for leveraging data across agencies, with a focus on productization and monetization of data assets and partnerships.
Dentsu Aegis Network chairman of media Doug Ray explained that the move came about as a result of clients increased demand to get the most out of data solutions and reflects a recognition that the future of media will be more data-led and tech-enabled.
“We can’t continue to have data and platform conversations siloed within our agencies,” he added. “We need to make those capabilities, access to those individuals, central to all of our agencies and leaders.”
Ray explained that more clients were moving away from a demographic to audience-based approach to media buying and planning and increasingly need a centralized resources for data solutions, while stressing that this is not meant as a replacement for capabilities within Dentsu Aegis Network’s individual media agencies.
“Not all data people understand media, not all media people understand data. Because we’ve been integrating over the last 5 years, [Carver, Jairath and Mohebbi] have been part of the journey,” Ray said. “We heaven’t had to start over in training people on our way of working, how we integrated in these capabilities. They’re the right people for these roles because of their background and core expertise and also because they’ve been part of our journey and have been identified as rising stars within our organization by both clients and those within Dentsu Aegis Network.”
The leadership restructuring is the latest in a series of changes for Dentsu Aegis Network’s media offering.
Last month, Carat global CEO and 2019 Adweek media executive of the year Michael Epstein was promoted to CEO, Dentsu Media Products and Services. In December, Carat named Angela Steele as Epstein’s successor in the U.S. CEO role and appointed Merkle vet Peter Vandre as its first chief analytics officer the following month.
