SNAP Snap Inc

By Lara O'Reilly 

Snap Inc. has appointed marketing and advertising veteran Kristen O'Hara to lead its U.S. sales operations, as the social-media company seeks to encourage marketers to shift more of their ad dollars to its ephemeral photo-sharing app.

Ms. O'Hara joins Snap from WarnerMedia, where she was chief marketing officer for global media. WarnerMedia, earlier known as Time Warner Inc., was sold to AT&T Inc. this year. It houses brands including TNT, CNN, HBO and Warner Bros.

Prior to her 16 years in rising marketing positions at Time Warner, Ms. O'Hara held senior roles at WPP PLC advertising agency Young & Rubicam, where she worked for clients including Sony, Yum Brands and Dr Pepper.

Ms. O'Hara will be based in Snap's New York office and report to Imran Khan, the company's chief strategy officer. She starts in her role as Snap's vice president of U.S. global business solutions on Sep. 4.

"Kristen knows what the top CMOs want because she was one of them herself," said Mr. Khan in a statement.

Snap's entrance on the social-networking scene has had a mixed response from advertisers, users and Wall Street. Snapchat is largely seen by advertisers as a platform to reach younger consumers, but a recent unpopular redesign of the app and the success of competitor Instagram have contributed to a slowing of daily audience growth.

Snap continues to grow its advertising business, but its share of the global digital ad market--an estimated 0.5% in 2018 according to research firm eMarketer--is far behind that of Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc's Google, which are expected to take an 18% and 31% share of global digital ad dollars spent this year respectively.

Mr. Khan said Ms. O'Hara's experience of working with Snap as a client and sitting as a member of its partner council, where a group of senior marketers meet regularly with the company to provide feedback on the platform, will help it better serve its advertisers.

Last year, Time Warner struck a wide-ranging $100 million deal with Snap that included commitments to develop shows for the app and place advertising on the platform from HBO, Warner Bros. and its Turner cable networks.

"Snapchat is a platform that offers marketers an unmatched combination of authenticity, creativity and scale," said Ms. O'Hara in a statement.

This isn't the first time Snap has looked to a Madison Avenue veteran to hone its pitch with advertisers. In 2016, the company hired former Viacom Inc. ad sales chief Jeff Lucas to lead its global sales. He left the company in February of this year and his duties were split among regional sales directors in the U.S, while Claire Valoti overtook responsibility for international ad sales.

Mr. Lucas joined Verizon Communications Inc.'s Oath division as its vice president of Americas sales two months later.

Snap has shifted its sales approach from focusing on trying to land direct, upfront premium deals with large advertisers to opening up its ad platform for companies of all sizes to use self-service tools to purchase ads on the app.

Snap's programmatic advertising revenue in the second quarter grew 485% year-on-year and 34% sequentially. This year, the company renamed its sales division as "business solutions" to reflect the more consultative role the team has taken on with advertisers.

Total revenue for Snap's most-recent quarter grew 44% to $262 million, ahead of analysts' expectations, although the company also reported the first decline in daily active users in its operating history, down 2% on the previous quarter to 188 million.

Georgia Wells contributed to this article

Write to Lara O'Reilly at lara.oreilly@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 30, 2018 09:14 ET (13:14 GMT)

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