This might be the most hotly contested and possibly controversial Best of the Best list we write this year. Any ranking is going to be tough, but ranking the industry’s top media owner sales bosses can be like trying to halve an already split hair.
Now, some caveats and notes. You’ll see that the people in this list all have “sales” or “growth” in their job titles. We’re not including CEOs, pure MDs or any other type of job titles. This list of 10 are salespeople first and foremost. There are some CEOs and MDs that have a significant focus on sales but have other parts to their roles. But you’ll find them on some of our other lists.
You also won’t see anyone from Seven West Media on this list, despite seeing representatives from Nine and Paramount. There are many important figures within the commercial team at Seven. But with chief revenue officer Kurt Burnette’s recent departure, we felt it right to leave the business off.
You’ll also see representatives from some companies that have undergone quite significant rounds of redundancies in recent weeks and months — notably Nine and News Corp. It could be argued that if the sales team are firing on all guns, other staff aren’t let go. But, as ever with our Best of the Best lists, these are a judgment on the people — not the companies they work for, or the sectors of the industry they work in. For instance, the most recent SMI data shows that spending on linear TV fell by 12.3 per cent in May. But, with the Olympics just days away and Origin having only just finished, you’ll struggle to find a channel that has more impact and cut-through during July. Similarly, publishing revenues fell for print newspapers by 11.8 per cent and digital newspaper spend fell by 19.3 per cent. But the newspaper sector continues to strike some of the biggest deals and exercise more influence over our politics and culture than any other.
As ever, if you would like to nominate someone for our upcoming Best of the Best lists — Commercial Director – Creative Agency, Film Directors Consumer PRs, Technologists and Media Agency Heads of Investment/Trading— please email [email protected] and we’ll add it to our long list of names to consider. You should also check out our most recent Best of the Best Independent Consultants list, here.
So join us as we don our tin hats and raise our heads above the parapet to reveal the Best of the Best Media Owner Commercial Directors.
10. Tim O’Connor, head of sales, Australia & New Zealand, Vevo
O’Connor was one of the founding members of the AUNZ Vevo team and has spent the past four-and-a-half years there. Recently named Best Salesperson at another industry event, O’Connor has been driving the Vevo team forward over the last half a decade. At its first-ever upfronts last year, O’Connor said that music videos have never been more popular and younger audiences have never been as hard to reach. But with the company reporting a monthly unique audience of 11.2 million viewers, 6.3 million of whom watch on CTV, there has never been a better way to tap into the minds of millennials and Gen Z and there has never been a better time to be part of O’Connor’s growing team.
9. Vanessa Jones, head of growth, Pinterest
Jones joined the Pinterest team just under three years ago and has grown from a sales manager focused on mid-market partnerships into her current head of growth role. Leading a team of eight, she works closely with the brands and agencies looking to get in front of ready-to-buy customers on what may well be the friendliest platform on the internet — save for B&T‘s recently departed comments section. The numbers don’t lie, either. In the three months ended 31 March, Pinterest’s Rest of the World business (in which Jones is a significant player) grew by a quarter — outpacing Europe, North America and the global average. Plus, as Pinterest is growing its full-funnel offering as CRO Bill Watkins told B&T in Cannes, we expect Jones to be making even bigger waves in the months to come.
8. Ted Shelton, head of growth, TikTok
Shelton is a digital sales lead par excellence having spent time with Twitter and Snapchat before joining the TikTok team three years ago as the head of growth. And what growth it has been. TikTok has become one of the most important platforms for growing Australian businesses to reach those pesky millennial, Gen Z and — whisper it — Gen Alpha consumers. In fact, it has become such a staple growth lever for businesses that Shelton and his team lead it now runs its own awards show for high-performing businesses and its Business Incubator event to bring its community together. Frankly, if you’re looking to reach consumers in 2024 (and likely 2025, notwithstanding any aggressive legislation from a US presidential hopeful) you need to be talking to Shelton.
7. Paul Sigaloff, chief revenue and growth officer, oOh!media
We said at the top of this article that most channels were experiencing declining spend. However, out-of-home and oOh!media are proving to be an exception — the sector grew 1.6 per cent month-to-month and nine per cent in the first quarter of this year. In its most recent annual report, oOh!media reported a seven per cent growth in revenue and a 10 per cent jump in net profit after tax. At a time when much of adland is slowing down, Siggy and his team are pushing forward. You might think that this is all down to a post-COVID rebound — and there may be some truth in that — but with many workers still hesitant to return to the office, Sigaloff has got his team working harder and producing more for clients than in previous years.
6. Carolyn Bollaci, head of media, Australia and New Zealand, Meta
Bollaci recently celebrated her seventh birthday with Meta, having joined as an agency partner in 2017. Now, however, she’s running the agency show and is responsible for signing some of the platform’s biggest deals. Since she started at the company, she scooped a B&T Women in Media Award in 2020 and found herself on the Women in Media Power List in the same year. In recent months, Meta has copped some flack over its decision to walk away from the News Media Bargaining Code deals but that isn’t really Bolacci’s remit. Instead, she leads her teams ably, helping them help brands and agencies make the most of the platform and its litany of tools as well as striking big deals.
5. Rod Prosser, chief sales officer, Paramount ANZ
Just a few months ago, Paramount’s global sales boss hailed its Australian sales operation as a “blueprint” for the rest of the world. He also said that Prosser and the team were able to “super-serve our clients and agency partners” in a way that no other market had been able to manage. Plus, with its new ad tier emerging and a global merger with Skydance Media hoping to “energise” its operations on the cards, it seems as though Paramount (and Channel 10) could be on the brink of a big new phase of growth. With all that in mind, there are few more important people in the TV landscape than Prosser at the moment — but more on that later.
4. Seb Rennie, chief commercial officer, SCA
In May last year, Rennie was bumped up the ladder at SCA from the executive head of LiSTNR Commercial to its chief commercial officer. And it’s been some ride. After the to-ing and fro-ing about the business’ potential acquisition by ARN, SCA continued to perform admirably across its radio and podcast offerings. Its LiSTNR podcasts go from strength to strength with Rennie’s team growing revenue by a quarter and LiSTNR’s sales representation network having 63 podcasts in the Top 200 Australian Podcast Ranker in June, and 38 titles in the All Australian Top 200. SCA’s radio efforts meanwhile, saw it win the 25-54-year-old category (AKA the people with money) nationally. Who needs a merger anyway?
3. Caroline Oates, head of YouTube and programmatic ad sales AUNZ, Google
Oates has one of the most singly important jobs in the Australian digital media landscape, helming YouTube and Google’s entire programmatic ad sales business. Vast amounts of money flow through her teams every single day and the deals that she strikes can be make-or-break for publications and businesses. Some may not think that running a programmatic division requires the same skills as running a more traditional sales department but in an age when data and measurement are king, the scrutiny Oates and her team receive from clients cannot be brushed under the carpet over a long lunch.
But Google, with Oates at the helm, is becoming more vocal about its challenge to traditional linear TV. At last year’s Brandcast extravaganza Oates — wearing an outfit with one helluva shoulder pad — said YouTube reaches 17 million Australians, was 67 per cent more effective than linear TV and drives 43 per cent higher ROI, according to Nielsen analysis. That’s a hard sales pitch to argue with.
2. Michael Stephenson, chief sales officer, Nine
Remember our caveats and notes from earlier? They’re worth revisiting at this point. Nine hasn’t had the best run recently with staff leaving, a journo strike pending and much consternation about boss Mike Sneesby’s holding of the Olympic Torch. But when it comes to signing big deals, there are few better than Stephenson — one only needs to look at its Olympics and Paralympics partners to work that out: Woolworths, Toyota, Harvey Norman and NRMA.
Nine’s revenues might be down but it is still performing well, having last year claimed the number one network spot and primary channel in all key demographics, attracting a commercial network audience share of 39.2 per cent and a primary channel share of 39.8 per cent of the 25-54 demographic. While the market might be softening for linear, Stephenson and his team are keeping brands front-and-centre in the minds of Australian consumers with its leading sporting coverage — and that is still worth an awful lot.
1. Lou Barrett, managing director, national sales, News Corp Australia
Could it be anyone else? Barrett has a near-unmatched influence over which brands play in Australia’s cultural scene being ultimately responsible for all of News Corp’s sales and client relationships. While News Corp Australia’s revenues might be down overall (as with the rest of its rivals) she continues to deliver huge results for brands such as Harvey Norman and Woolworths (again) as well as Omega and Stan Sport through uniting News Corp’s Olympics and Paralympics coverage. She has also brought News Corp into a position of true leadership in the industry with the country’s most senior media buyers lauding its recent D_Coded event as a “big step forward” for the business on several fronts.
But also Barrett stands apart for her fearless leadership and advocacy for women. A fixture on B&T‘s Women in Media Power List and with 95 per cent of her leadership team being women, Barrett is also noted as a brilliant mentor and guide for younger members of the industry. As she told us ahead of our Women in Media Awards (coming next month, buy your tickets now): “Don’t ever think you can’t have it all and by that I mean a successful career and the joys of being a mum.”
And that is why Lou Barrett is the Best of the Best.
