The hire of Mr. Price in an equivalent role to the one held by
Facebook's Carolyn Everson and Twitter's Adam Bain is a signal to
brands and agencies that LinkedIn has serious ambitions for its ad
business, which had already become apparent through its new
positioning as
a content-marketing platform. Earlier this year, it introduced
sponsored updates, its version of native ads that appear in users'
news feeds. It's busily pitching them to marketers who are
intrigued by the proliferation of content on the platform, which
includes contributed pieces by the likes of Bill Gates and Richard
Branson and business headlines served in the "LinkedIn Today"
module at the top of the home page.
A New York-based digital sales executive who's well known to
agencies, Mr. Price was in a variety of roles during his seven-year
tenure at Google. He
ended his career there as VP-global agency sales and
partnerships, charged with encouraging the biggest global agencies
to use and spend more on Google search, display and YouTube. For
the past two years he's been president of Dstillery -- which was
until recently called Media6Degrees -- an ad-tech firm that helps
marketers prospect for customers by matching characteristics of
their existing customer base to people who exhibit similar
behaviors on the web.
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"Connecting the world's professionals has enabled LinkedIn to
become a unique and powerful global resource," said Mr. Price in a
statement. "I am excited to support the [LinkedIn marketing
solutions] team and its current offerings, while helping establish
new and even more impactful ways for companies to connect with
their existing and future customers."
LinkedIn's most visible sales executive, Jonathan Lister, will
continue to helm LinkedIn's ad sales in North America. He'll report
to Mr. Price, whose globally focused role has been vacant for
several years, according to a LinkedIn spokeswoman. In turn, Mr.
Price will report to Mike Gamson, senior VP-global solutions, who
leads sales for all of LinkedIn's business divisions.
