Warner Bros. Discovery Restructures Ad Division After Slow Year
By Movieguide® Contributor
Warner Bros. Discovery is restructuring its advertising sales division after a slow year.
“Over the past year, we have been listening to our clients and partners and have seen firsthand what is delivering real value for them and great performance for us. This new structure will allow us to deliver what matters most for all—creating a single and seamless interface into the full world of WBD,” said WBD ad sales chief Jon Steinlauf. “We are leveraging the power of our world-class content, platforms and partnerships to drive how the market works now—and for years to come.”
The new structure will see Marybeth Strobel and Greg Regis leading agency-specific teams. Jon Diament will head WBD’s sports divisions, while Ryan Gould will lead the company’s digital ad team, including Max, Discovery+, WBD Stream and CNN Digital.
Warner Bros. Discovery isn’t the only entertainment company reconfiguring its advertising departments.
Paramount’s chief of ad sales, John Halley, has worked on ad projects like EyeQ, a “scaled digital advertising platform.”
“We connected three pre-existing digital environments—CBS Interactive, Pluto and Viacom Video—under a single operational backend, which allowed us to merchandise our total scale across all those endpoints,” Halley explained. “It has been a game-changer.”
Disney has also dealt with their own corporate shake-ups; the return of Bob Iger meant dismantling many of former CEO Bob Chapek’s projects.
The Hollywood Reporter wrote that many departments, including ad sales, “will now function across both Disney Entertainment and ESPN in a bid to create efficiency and a more streamlined and cost-effective approach to operations.”
Movieguide® previously reported on some of the changes happening at WBD:
As streaming service changes and rumored layoffs loom, Warner Bros. Discovery faces a critical week ahead of their Q2 earnings report on Thursday.
Deadline reports that “CEO David Zaslav and his team are expected to lay out more concrete plans for the combined entity than they did on the Q1 earnings call, held just a couple of weeks after the $43 billion Discovery-WarnerMedia merger had been completed.”
The report could also include details regarding the future of the two companies’ streaming services, Discovery+ and HBO Max, such as how they might be combined and under what name.
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