Execs & Accounts: Turn, Yahoo, Mindshare
McGoran leaps off Peer39 to Turn; Olivo to exit Yahoo; Mindshare's Andrews departs to plan new venture.
Ad targeting firm Turn has hired industry vet Hugh McGoran. After less than a year as SVP of advertising sales with semantic ad platform firm Peer39, McGoran now will serve as VP of sales at Turn. Before his stint with Peer39, he spent time at Tacoda and several years with Real Cities. McGoran is charged with managing Turn’s national sales team with a focus on developing new clients in new markets. He’ll be based in midtown Manhattan.
Allen Olivo will leave Yahoo. The VP of global brand marketing has been with Yahoo for over three years, and will stay on during a transition period. A Yahoo spokesperson did not name his replacement.
Mindshare Digital Chief Strategy Simon Andrews will leave the company. The media agency exec plans to spend the summer seeking new business opportunities involving smart phone media and services.
In other Mindshare news, Ciaran Norri was named to lead a new social marketing agency joint venture between Mindshare and SocialMedia8. He was previously head of search and social marketing at Altogether Digital in London. The new unit will be dubbed Mindshare SocialMedia8.
Full service agency Purple@Epsilon is building out its healthcare industry outreach by naming Alex Kooluris VP and GM. Kooluris hails from Saatchi & Saatchi’s consumer healthcare agency Glow Worm, and is tasked with expanding Purple’s healthcare services, and supporting its pharma clients. He’ll report to another recent hire, SVP, GM Andrew Bast.
Semantic intelligence and predictive analytics firm BeliefNetworks added Troy McConnell and Joe Meyer to its board of directors. McConnell is founder of Hispanic music service Batanga, while Meyer is CEO of city transportation site HopStop.com. Charleston-based BeliefNetworks is also opening a sales office in New York City.
VideoEgg hired Phil O’Neill as director of network analytics. He was previously a technical director of R&D for Advertising.com. In the new role he’ll focus on optimizing client campaigns.
Walmart.com will use richrelevance’s product recommendation tools. The retail giant has integrated richrecs, a system for personalized product recommendations based on shopping behavior of individuals or groups of shoppers. Walmart.com has tested the system since the fall of 2008.
