NBCU Bolsters Advanced Ad Solutions Teams

NBCUniversal today announced a series of new hires that it says underscores its “continued investment in advanced advertising products and alternative measurement solutions for the media industry.”

These three executives will be charged with building out and creating partnerships to develop NBCUniversal’s proprietary advertising products, technology platforms and measurement approaches giving the company’s advertising clients more tools and insights into the reach and impact of their marketing campaigns.

“The addition of these leaders to our team demonstrates our commitment to innovation and to pushing the most important areas of our industry forward,” said Mike Rosen, EVP, advanced advertising and platform sales, NBCUniversal.

Ed Kozek, senior vice president, advertising technology — Ed Kozek will report to Mike Mayer, EVP, sales solutions, NBCUniversal, and manage the overall ad technology strategy as well as the development of proprietary ad products, partnering with all of NBCUniversal’s brands and the Audience Studio.

Kozek was most recently at The Weather Co. (acquired by IBM in 2016). There, he was SVP of ad product and engineering, managing all ad technology relationships as well as building out proprietary ad products.

Prior to joining Weather, Kozek was co-founder and chief technology officer of Ghostery (previously known as Evidon), where he managed the engineering, product, data science, security and professional services teams for the company.

Pankaj Kumar, senior vice president, measurement and innovation — Pankaj Kumar will report to Kavita Vazirani, EVP, insights and measurement, and will help drive measurement transformation and enabling capabilities that demonstrate the efficacy of media across the sales division.

Kumar joins from Comcast Cable, where he led the Media Sciences team responsible for developing an analytically driven media and message mix optimization strategy, and driving improvement of media effectiveness across both residential and business services. His responsibilities included leading the strategy for marketing mix optimization to build brand consideration, driving subscriber growth and mitigate subscriber loss.

Prior to joining Comcast, Pankaj held leadership positions at Optimor and IMS Health, where he built analytics capabilities, developing advanced solutions, leading large scale analytic engagements, and driving client thought leadership across CPG, retail, pharmaceuticals, health care, financial services, insurance, telecom and technology companies.

Brian Norris, senior vice president, audience studio sales — Brian Norris will report to Mike Rosen, EVP, advanced advertising and platform sales, NBCUniversal, and lead the sales team responsible for NBCUniversal’s Audience Studio suite of industry-leading, advanced advertising capabilities.

Norris brings more than 15 years of management and leadership experience driving television revenue in linear, addressable and digital media.

Before joining NBCUniversal, Norris was VP of Dish Media Sales where he led the day-to-day efforts for all advertising sales, viewer measurement and operations for the company. Earlier in his career he held sales roles at Viacom and Lifetime Entertainment Services.