Chris Dobson, the former BBC Worldwide executive vice-president and general manager of its advertising division, has joined programmatic technology company The Exchange Lab as chairman of the board of directors.
Dobson will apply his veteran’s experience in digital ad sales to help the company develop its strategic direction and expand its client network.
At the BBC for five years, Dobson was responsible for advertising monetization across all BBC Worldwide divisions and BBC World News. In previous positions at Microsoft (vice-president and general manager, U.K. online services division, and vice-president, global ad sales and trade marketing) Dobson worked on monetizing Microsoft’s content and social audience assets, which today generate $2.5B in advertising revenue.
“The future of digital advertising lies in programmatic marketing,” Dobson said in a release. “The Exchange Lab is at the epicentre of the programmatic media marketplace, and I am thrilled to foster its growth to one of the largest media players in the world.”
The Exchange Lab, which launched in the U.K. in 2007 and has since added offices in Toronto, Istanbul, New York and San Francisco, has been aggressively expanding to take advantage of the growing market for demand-side programmatic solutions. It recently hired a new Canadian operations director and chief revenue officer, and secured an $8M investment from the U.K.’s Business Growth Fund.
