BuzzFeed appoints Greg Coleman as president

BuzzFeed has appointed ad sales veteran Greg Coleman as its new president with a brief to ramp up its social advertising offering to brands. 

BuzzFeed branded post

Coleman replaces Jon Steinberg who left last month to join the North American arm of MailOnline.  He joins from advertising technology company Criteo, where he was president and is a former president and chief revenue officer at Huffington Post and vice president of sales at Yahoo. 

In addition to overseeing sales, creative services, marketing and products and business development, he is tasked with securing a greater share of brands’ ad budget for Buzzfeed’s social advertising offering.

Currently Buzzfeed generates all revenue from its native advertising model – helping brands to create sponsored posts in the hope visitors to the site will want to share. It claims to work with more than 60 of the 100 biggest US brands by advertising spend.

Jonah Peretti, founder of BuzzFeed, says of Coleman’s appointment: “Social, content-driven advertising has really come of age in the last three years, and Greg joining us validates that enormous shift.

“Greg helped transform industries at Huffington Post and Criteo and now will scale social advertising globally as it becomes an essential part of every major brand’s marketing strategy.”

Read Marketing Week’s profile of Jonah Peretti. 

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