A year can make a huge difference in the Australia’s frenetic and rapidly evolving media industry.
Just this year, Seven West Media and Southern Cross Austereo merged, while Nine acquired one of the largest outdoor advertising companies in QMS and offloaded its radio business in the process.
This has resulted in plenty of movement in this year’s B&T Best of the Best Media Sales Bosses list.
For starters, the shake-up in the Seven and SCA union has resulted chief commercial officer Sebastian Rennie recently exiting; he will soon be succeeded by Mamamia’s Natalie Harvey.
As Harvey has not yet begun her new role, she has not been included this year.
Grant Madigan, who has recently succeeded Rod Prosser as Paramount’s sales boss, is one to watch. As is SCA’s national head of sales Luke Minto, whose role was confirmed as the new audio lead after Seb Rennie departed.
In devising this list, B&T considered the scale of the role (ad sales and sales team size), sales performance, achievements and innovations in the past year, and the broader impact these leaders are having on the industry.
If you would like to nominate someone for B&T’s Best of the Best lists, check out this form.
Here is this year’s B&T Best of the Best Media Sales Bosses.
10) Michael Levine, head of APAC, Uber Advertising
A new entrant on this list is Uber Advertising’s Asia-Pacific boss Michael Levine. Since joining as advertising boss in 2022, Levine has grown Uber Advertising from an emerging retail media proposition into one of the industry’s fastest-growing commercial businesses with an estimated $210 million in local revenue.
Levine now presides over a 60-strong team, which achieved very strong year-on-year growth in 2025, across non-endemic advertisers and the CPG segment. Uber Advertising has experienced strong growth across all its verticals, too.
It’s little wonder Levine was promoted to lead Uber Advertising across APAC in 2025, with oversight over Japan, India, China Export, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
9) Richard Hunwick, chief sales officer, ARN
When Michael Stephenson joined ARN, one of his first appointments was bringing across his Nine colleague Richard Hunwick.
Widely regarded as one of Australia’s most respected sales leaders, Hunwick has a track record of leading large cross-functional sales teams and implementing large digital transformation programs. He was director of TV sales at Nine, helping the business book record ad revenue for a decade, and at ARN leads the sales operation of a business that is transitioning from being an audio company into an “entertainment” business, as per Stephenson’s vision.
ARN has endured a tough 2025 as its revenue fell 10 per cent to $285 million on the back of a soft advertising market.
But with dynamic ads soon to be served on the iHeart platform and an ad ecosystem that now spans radio, digital audio, digital video, podcast and live, Hunwick and his team have the foundations to become a holistic entertainment destination for advertisers.
8) Mark Fairhurst, chief revenue officer, oOh!media
An out of home veteran who previously worked at APN Outdoor (now JCDecaux) and QMS, Mark Fairhurst has spent the past 18 months making oOh!Media advertising solutions are simpler, faster and smarter to buy.
His efforts are definitely paying off. Under his watch, the business has reduced brief-to-booking turnaround times across key formats by 30 per cent, grown partnership revenue from key customers by 15 per cent, and made 17 per cent efficiency gains in revenue per sales full time equivalent.
This has led oOh!Media to receive industry plaudits for customer service, winning the 2025 Media i National Sales Team of the Year and the IMAA Sales Team of the Year.
In 2025, oOh!Media increased revenue by 9 per cent to $691.4 million, however the loss of a notable street furniture contract in Auckland will start to trickle through. The company is on the cusp of a $900 million acquisition by private equity firm I Squared.
7) Nicole Bence, chief commercial officer, Nova Entertainment
In an challenging audio advertising market, Nova Entertainment feels like a steady ship, consistently maintaining its position as the country’s biggest metro radio network with over 6.7 million cumulative listeners.
This has translated into solid 2025 revenue of $195 million, up slightly year-on-year in an ad market that has been struggling for growth.
Leading the sales operation is one of the industry’s top sales leaders in Nicole Bence. In the past year, Bence has set out a clear mission to increase audio’s share of the media mix to 11 per cent of media budgets, up from the 7 per cent share today.
Nova has made strides to help brands and agencies plan, optimise and measure audio campaigns with greater precision. It is now offering conversational listening and forged a partnership with BrandSpace, the retail media arm of Westfield’s parent company ScentreGroup.
6) Nev Hasan, chief sales officer, Foxtel Media
Foxtel Media is rewriting TV’s trading rules and sales chief Nev Hasan is at the heart of one of the industry’s most exciting innovations.
The launch of LinearIQ brings impression-based, digital-style buying to linear screens as advertisers demand transparency, precision and ROI in a fragmented video market.
It essentially allows advertisers to target behavioural audience segments, aiming to deliver more transparent and outcome-driven TV campaigns.
It is innovations such as these, and huge audience growth in Kayo Sports coverage of the cricket, AFL and NRL, that is helping Foxtel ad sales continue to grow well north of $360 million per annum.
Other innovations in gaming and retail media partnerships, as well as measurement, have Foxtel Media and Hasan’s team primed for a bright future.
5) Tim Murphy, chief sales officer, QMS
There is a reason why Nine stumped up $850 million to acquire QMS in April. The premium digital out-of-home company has been on a tear lately, winning major contracts, such as Auckland transport and several prominent sites across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
Tim Murphy is responsible for commercialising QMS’s vast OOH network and has made great strides in the past couple of years.
A highlight has been selling out brand partnerships across the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, as well as other significant cultural moments such as Vivid.
QMS and its parent company Nine have also secured a partnership to become the official outdoor network for Metcash’s retail media arm, effectively closing the “sofa to store” loop.
At QMS, Murphy is responsible for a broad range of stakeholders and is described as possessing a “work ethic that is off the charts”.
QMS is estimated to have a market share of 27 per cent of the Australian outdoor advertising market and has indicated 2026 calendar year revenue of around $400 million. Expect this share to rise under Murphy’s watch.
4) Katie Finney, director of sales, TV & Streaming, Seven
Katie Finney is responsible for Seven’s TV and streaming advertising sales.
She will continue to report into head of TV and streaming Angus Ross when Southern Cross Media Group’s new chief revenue officer Natalie Harvey begins in September.
Seven has posted respectable results in a structurally challenged TV advertising market, with TV revenue falling 6.6 per cent to $1.25 billion. The market was down more than 9 per cent over the same period.
Finney has have provided leadership and a safe pair of hands as the parent company Southern Cross restructures its leadership team and makes cuts across the business.
During the same period Seven’s TV audience share grew to 42.5 per cent (up 1.3 percentage points) and its overall TV audience climbed 2.8 per cent.
Highlights of the past year have included Seven’s Ashes coverage, the AFL season and the recent Commonwealth Games—which have exceeded advertising and partnerships targets.
3) Caroline Oates, YouTube & programmatic ad sales lead, Google
As Google’s Head of YouTube and Programmatic Sales for Australia and New Zealand, Caroline Oates has been at the forefront of YouTube’s push to become a serious rival to traditional television.
In 2025, she was a prominent face of YouTube’s commercial strategy, helping drive the rollout of new advertising products spanning connected TV, AI, measurement and commerce.
At Brandcast, she showcased formats including 60-second non-skippable ads, shoppable CTV and AI-powered “Peak Points”, as YouTube said that it reaches more than 20.1 million Australian adults, 96 per cent of the online adult population.
Oates presented research that showed YouTube campaigns generate an average 2.9x return on ad spend for offline sales, and the platform is ranked Australia’s number-one streaming video platform.
In 2026, Oates positioned creator-led culture as the next frontier for brands and provided industry leadership through the IAB Australia board and Women in Media initiatives.
2) Matt James, chief sales officer, Nine Entertainment
Matt James leads the revenue growth across Australia’s largest media group, bringing 35 years of media industry experience to the position.
In the past year, Nine announced a major unified trading model that allows advertisers to buy pooled inventory across 9Now, Stan and HBO Max.
The addition of QMS and a retail media partnership with Metcash provides Nine’s sales operation with a “sofa to shopping” offering that is unique to the Australian market.
James is also an advocate of consolidating with commercial FTA rivals from a technology and ease of trading perspective.
There has been speculation that Nine could provide sales support for Ten, or that it could partner with its FTA peers on preferred DSP partners.
As the industry undergoes rapid upheaval, James will be at the forefront of reshaping how the legacy media industry goes to market in the future.
A special shout out goes to Nine’s Total TV national sales director Nikki Rooke.
1) Lou Barrett, chief revenue officer, News Australia
Over the past 12 months, Lou Barrett has continued to redefine what commercial leadership looks like at News Australia.
Most recently, she launched The Prompt, an AI advisory helping CMOs understand how brands are discovered and recommended in an AI-first world, taking the insights on the road through hosted breakfasts, industry forums and executive briefings across the country.
She appointed former Initiative boss Jo McAlister to launch STORYx, a new function for content integration and strategy, helping commercial partners tell stories across the entire News Australia network.
Barrett also played a key role in Back Australia, a national campaign encouraging consumers to back Australian businesses, and was a driving force behind Tubi’s first year as News Australia’s streaming partner.
Barrett expanded the Industry Lead model into Finance, Insurance, Sport and Entertainment, joining existing leads across Travel, Health and Beauty, and Retail. Her SMB-focused All Access series brought News Australia’s full offering directly to growing businesses nationally.
Barrett also expanded News Australia’s partnership with The Marketing Academy to champion emerging marketing leaders.
Barrett’s leadership continues to combine commercial rigour with genuine industry stewardship.
