News

Paramount Global is shaking up the way it communicates with Madison Avenue.

Karen Phillips, Chris Simon and David Lawenda were given new duties under a team that is now being directed by John Halley, who was named president of the operation in September. The moves effectively merge ad-sales teams that had been devoted separately to sales related to assets that had in the past been assigned to either the former CBS Corp. or Viacom Inc., the two companies that merged in late 2019 to form Paramount Global.

The new ad-sales team is being structured to that specific executives are assigned to work with individual media-buying agencies. Phillips, for example, will now overseeing Paramount’s relationships with Omnicom Media Group, GroupM, and Horizon Media, as well as the development of new business. Simon will supervise Paramount’s relationships with Interpublic Group, Dentsu and Publicis. Lawenda will serve as chief digital advertising officer,...

ViacomCBS unveiled a new ad-sales team that relies heavily on senior executives who were already reporting to Jo Ann Ross, the newly merged company’s ad-sales chief, when she was leading them at the former CBS Corp.

ViacomCBS said longtime Ross lieutenants John Bogusz, Linda Rene, Chris Simon, Dave Morris and David Lawenda will all remain part of the ad-sales team. Bogusz will continue to lead sports ad-sales; Rene will oversee primetime ad sales and advertising integrations; Simon will serve as executive vice president of network sales; Morris will take on a new role as chief client officer of ViacomCBS, focusing on the company’s overall portfolio and working to develop a unified ad strategy for the company’s top clients; and Lawenda will take on a new role overseeing ad-sales related to digital video and branded content across all ViacomCBS platforms as well as social influencer sales. He will...

About a month and a half after the close of the Viacom-CBS merger, the combined company has finalized the roster of advertising sales executives reporting up to Jo Ann Ross.

Last October, Ross was confirmed as the head of sales for the combined company, following a 27-year stretch at CBS, the latter half of which coincided with the flagship broadcast network’s rise to dominance.

While the announcement last fall about her promotion meant longtime Viacom sales chief Sean Moran was among the executives to depart, six additional departures have been revealed. Several of those remaining in the fold also have new titles and roles.

What follows is an overview of the newly configured ranks, according to insiders at ViacomCBS, who conveyed the news to employees on Wednesday afternoon.

John Bogusz will remain Evp of Sports Sales and Marketing, CBS Network Sales, overseeing sales for sports across the...

TV is heading for a commercial breakdown.

TV networks are set to broadcast many of the same old ads viewers have grown accustomed to seeing for dozens of years. And yet, executives hope they can make those spots more interesting, more timely and harder to ignore by finding new ways to distribute them and measure their effectiveness.

What the industry is realizing is this: what a commercial says may not be as important as how it’s introduced to the viewer Madison Avenue needs to see it. Come the fall, couch potatoes are likely to experience everything from ad breaks only two commercials in length to pitches beamed to them through their Samsung or LG smart TV.

Whether these new ads are successful remains guesswork. Magna, the Interpublic Group media-research unit, has called for overall U.S. ad spending to grow 5.5% over 2017, and expects media owners to collect $197 billion in net advertising revenue.

CBS just joined the pack of TV providers making big changes in their ad sales teams as the business becomes more competitive, and potentially challenging. Ad sales chief Jo Ann Ross was promoted to President and Chief Advertising Officer for the corporation. Former Facebook head of U.S., Global Marketing Solutions David Lawenda moves to CBS as Evp of Digital Sales and Sales Strategy, reporting to Ross. And former Chief Revenue Officer for CBS Interactive, Dave Morris…...

Sometimes you get a chance to simply sit down and talk with an actor; no timetable, no handler, and every question is fair game. Darren Shahlavi was kind enough to sit down with me for that style of interview, and over the course of our 20 minute conversation we covered a huge number of topics. Shahlavi has started to hone his craft and play increasingly larger roles in films and TV, and his hard work is starting to really show. Shahlavi stars in Ip Man 2 (read my review here) as the main bad guy, Twister, who is a Western boxer visiting Hong Kong. After screening the film just moments before, I was able to interview him and you can see the results after the jump.

Darren and I covered a lot of ground, but among the topics were his fighting background, how he got his first big break and then landed...