PHD U.S. named Katie Klein its new president of integrated investment, replacing Harry Keeshan who is retiring. With the change in leadership, the Omnicom Media Group agency is looking to redefine the investment role to have purview beyond the video landscape into new channels like commerce.   

Klein joins PHD from Zenith Media, where she most recently served as senior VP, national video investment. During her tenure with Zenith, Klein was also a member of the agency’s client leadership team. She will report to both Geoffrey Calabrese, OMG North America chief investment officer; and Catherine Sullivan, CEO, PHD U.S.

Keeshan will retire from the company after four decades in the industry, 20 years of which were spent at PHD. To honor Keeshan, PHD set up an annual award to honor people who are role models for their team and the agency.

Klein is the latest new hire by Sullivan since becoming CEO in September 2020; Joshua Palau was named chief media and activation officer last month.

“The market has obviously changed substantially over the past year. We are thinking differently about how the world works and clients’ expectations of us,” Sullivan says. “The lines are getting blurred between commerce, digital and linear, and we will see a lot more expertise required for these skill sets.”  

Previously, PHD operated in siloes with digital and video operations split. “Those lines are gone,” Sullivan says. Klein will lead investment for all channels across linear, streaming and audio, and “whatever channel is next,” Sullivan adds. She predicts the next channel of interest will be commerce.

PHD is looking at commerce the way it looked at digital 15 years ago, Sullivan says. It’s a nescient business and right now it is about aggregation and identfying the major players. 

As the industry heads into the upfronts—when media companies look to secure a bulk of their ad commitments—PHD is looking to revamp their investment strategy to help brands better find audiences in a fragmented media landscape. To this end, Sullivan says the agency is looking at how they position clients like Volkswagen and Google as the story, rather than an interruption of a story.

There’s also less inventory available to buy in the so-called scatter marketplace, which is changing the way PHD will evaluate the marketplace during this year’s ad haggle.

Diversifying investment for clients will also be an important onus this spring, as minority-owned media companies call for a larger allocation of ad dollars than they have received historically.

To this end, Sullivan says PHD is in conversations with larger media companies like BET, which isn’t Black-owned, but has a large share of voice. The goal is to find ways to have those media companies work together with Black-owned channels like Revolt, to lift them all up. “We are looking at how we can lock arms to get distribution so advertisers can spend more,” she says.