Verizon Media recruited Elizabeth Herbst-Brady — a media-biz veteran who most recently was head of global strategic partnerships at Snap, Snapchat’s parent company — as head of U.S. field sales.
She will be based in New York, reporting directly to Jeff Lucas, head of North American sales and global client solutions. Lucas also had been at Snap, departing as global head of sales in early 2018 before joining Verizon, and both Lucas and Herbst-Brady are former Viacom execs.
Verizon Media is the new name of “Oath,” the now-abandoned moniker of the merged AOL-Yahoo internet group. The division has failed to deliver the hoped-for synergies and lost share to digital-ad rivals. After Oath revenue declined 6.9% in the third quarter of 2018, Verizon took a $4.6 billion charge related to Oath for the fourth quarter of 2018, a write-down representing the elimination of nearly the entire goodwill balance Verizon was carrying for the Oath acquisitions.
At Verizon Media, Herbst-Brady is tasked with leading the advertising sales team focused on serving some of the company’s top advertisers across verticals — with the goal of regaining some of the AOL-Yahoo group’s lost momentum.
“I’m thrilled to join Verizon Media and work with this team to create what’s next in content, advertising and technology, while helping advertisers benefit from these innovations,” Herbst-Brady said in a statement. “With a clear focus on growing mobile and video opportunities for marketers in the year ahead, Verizon Media is well positioned to build smarter solutions for our top advertisers through our content, scale and data.”
At Snap, Herbst-Brady managed major agency and brand relationships for the company and, prior to that, she was the head of East Coast sales. Before that she was EVP of ad sales strategy and product at Viacom Media Networks and prior to that was president at Magna Global. Herbst-Brady also held roles at Twentieth Television, Starcom Worldwide, Universal Television, Fox Inc., Tribune Entertainment and CBS.
Verizon Media is led by CEO Guru Gowrappan, who took over the reins Oct. 1 after former Oath CEO Tim Armstrong left the company.
Brands in the Verizon Media Group include HuffPost, TechCrunch, Engadget, AOL.com, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, RYOT, MAKERS, Tumblr, Build Studios, Yahoo Mail and Verizon Digital Media Services. In the past year, Verizon has offloaded a few Oath properties, including Flickr (acquired by SmugMug) and Moviefone (sold to MoviePass parent Helios & Matheson Analytics).