AppNexus Co-Founder Brian O'Kelley Shifts to AT&T Advisory Role
October 05 2018 - 10:48AM
Dow Jones News
By Lara O'Reilly
Brian O'Kelley, the founder and chief executive officer of
AppNexus, the ad-tech company recently bought by AT&T Inc. for
around $1.6 billion, is shifting to an advisory role at the
telecoms firm, according to people familiar with the matter.
AT&T's acquisition of AppNexus helped lay the foundations
for a new advertising and analytics unit at AT&T called Xandr.
That unit is led by Brian Lesser, a former executive at WPP PLC's
GroupM media-buying unit, who is planning to build a
first-of-its-kind marketplace for television and digital video
advertising.
In an email to employees reviewed by The Wall Street Journal,
Mr. Lesser said Mr. O'Kelly will move away from day-to-day
operations and work in an advisory role "for the foreseeable
future."
"Brian is a leader's leader, and I appreciate him setting up a
fantastic team at AppNexus that will help lead Xandr to the next
level," Mr. Lesser said in the email.
Xandr -- its name is derived from that of AT&T founder
Alexander Graham Bell -- also includes AT&T's AdWorks and
data-and-analytics units.
When AT&T's purchase of AppNexus was first reported, Madison
Avenue executives predicted the platform could offer them more
choice in the digital ad market and provide more competition with
the industry's dominant players, Google and Facebook Inc.
Jonathan Hsu, the former chief financial officer of AppNexus,
and AppNexus's former chief people and legal officer, Nithya Das,
are also moving to advisory roles.
Mr. O'Kelley founded AppNexus in 2007 and built it into one of
the largest independent ad-tech companies. Prior to that he was the
chief technology at Right Media, an online advertising company that
sold to Yahoo in 2007 for $680 million.
-- Suzanne Vranica contributed to this article.
Write to Lara O'Reilly at lara.o'reilly@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 05, 2018 11:33 ET (15:33 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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