Posts Tagged "Friending…"

Friending: Walker Jacobs, SVP Turner Digital Sports & Entertainment

Walker Jacobs is senior vice president of Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital, overseeing online advertising sales for the Turner Entertainment Group portfolio of TBS, TNT, truTV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, and GameTap, as well as the digital properties of Turner Sports which include NBA.com, NASCAR.com, PGA.com, PGATour.com, TBS Hot Corner at MLB.com, and broadband channel TNT Overtime at NBA.com. He is based in New York and reports to David Levy, president of Turner Broadcasting Sales, Inc. and Turner Sports.
Since joining Turner in August 2007, Jacobs has built a team that develops integrated sales and marketing solutions for advertisers across the sports and entertainment portfolio of television networks and businesses, and drives all ad sales on the internet, video-on-demand (VOD), and mobile platforms. Under Jacobs’ leadership, the newly-formed group has made groundbreaking strides in the digital ad sales arena. In May 2008, Jacobs played an integral role in launching the Turner Network, a consortium of nearly twenty online destinations that include entertainment, news, sports, kids and young adult digital platforms. The creation of the Turner Network broke affiliation with third-party ad networks to better develop, package and execute all digital inventory, and allows distinct advertising opportunities that leverage Turner’s portfolio of world-class brands and visitor demographics.

In July 2008, Jacobs helped Turner Sports and Entertainment Ad Sales broker a multi-year strategic alliance with Yahoo! Inc. that allowed the two companies to collaborate on advertising and sports-related content. The agreement established Turner as the exclusive representative of online advertising sales for the NBA, golf and NASCAR pages of Yahoo! Sports, the #1 online sports destination, and provided increased exposure of Turner sports content to Yahoo! audiences.

Before joining Turner, Jacobs served as senior vice president of the Reuters Americas Media Group, responsible for general management of Reuters.com, managing ad sales and business development, as well as content sales for Reuters Media Business in the U.S., Canada and Latin America. Notably, while at Reuters, Jacobs negotiated a partnership with NASDAQ and subsequently managed sales of “Times Square Squared,” a venture that combined The Reuters Sign and NASDAQ Tower as the world’s largest outdoor digital display system, based in Times Square, New York. Jacobs joined Reuters by way of the company’s March 2003 acquisition of Multex Incorporated, a leading financial research and information company. Prior to the merger, as vice president, he managed the media business and advertising sales for Multex Investor and Marketguide properties. Jacobs began his executive career in media as Publisher of Institutional Investor Online, responsible for general management, operations, advertising sales, e-commerce and marketing of their websites.
Jacobs serves on the Board of Directors for Junior Achievement New York. He is a graduate of John Carroll University and currently resides in Manhattan with his wife Jennie and his daughter Louise.

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Big Fuel Lanches Youtube Channel with New Original Series: “Friending”

Friends, Colleagues, Partners,

To officially kick off the launch of our YouTube Channel, “Content to Commerce,” today we are launching a new series of webisodes called, “Friending…”.

“Friending” a BIG FUEL original series in partnership with DM2, brings you insights from today’s marketing, advertising and entertainment leaders on the subject of social media, consumer engagement and communications in today’s new media landscape. For the premiere episode, Big Fuel founder and CEO, Avi Savar sits down for an intimate conversation with Larry Gelfand, SVP Digital Ad Sales at the NHL.

About Larry Gelfand:
Larry Gelfand joined the NHL in October of 2007 as Senior Vice President, Media Sales. In this post, Gelfand leads the NHL’s media sales effort in the U.S., focusing on development of new revenue opportunities, aggregating all media inventory and managing the NHL media sales team. Prior to joining the NHL, Larry Gelfand was the Vice President of Digital Sales for VH1 at MTV Networks. Gelfand oversaw all aspects of VH1′s Digital media sales business and developed the sales strategy, recruitment of the sales staff in implementation of organizational goals and initiatives. Gelfand reshaped the VH1 digital sales department to achieve the objectives of establishing the VH1.com presence in the online advertising marketplace resulting in doubling the ad revenue business in two years, when he was the recipient of the first President’s Award of distinguished service. Prior to joining MTV Networks, Gelfand served in a variety of key sales roles with ESPN. After establishing ESPN.com’s ad sales relationships in New England with key league partners, Gelfand lead the digital effort for ESPN Customer Marketing’s Team OMD. Prior to joining ESPN. Gelfand served in a variety of sales leadership roles at AOL and The New York Times.

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