AOL (NYSE: AOL) is restructuring its European executive leadership in a reshuffle that sees AOL Europe CEO Kate Burns leave and two toppers from GoViral get called up.
AOL bought the video ad network in January for up to $96.7 million. It gave paidContent this statement…
“Kate Burns has made a personal decision to leave AOL. She decided to leave to spend more time with her family and personal pursuits.
“She came to the business two years ago as SVP sales and CEO of European operation to help turn the business around.
“In that time, and ahead of schedule, she successfully refocused the efforts, established a strong leadership team and scaled the business’ operations structure.
“To best deliver the changes to our UK and European business, we’ve formalised an operation which we believe will support this.”
New leadership structure:-
— René Rechtman (currently GoViral’s CEO) – new head of Europe for Advertising.com – remit to advance its partnership strategy across Europe.
— Jimmy Maymann (GoViral’s chair) – new head of AOL’s media businesses outside of North America – leading Huffington Post and AOL’s owned-and-operated media operations for Europe and elsewhere, all content expansion opportunities.
— Supported by new Europe and Latin America Noel Penzer (currently AOL Europe media and biz dev VP).
— Nimeshh Patel (head of European operations) and Sarah Gavin (VP marketing and communications) continue.
Burns will stay aboard until October’s end in an advisory capacity. She is one of the UK’s leading digital media execs, having been Google’s UK, Ireland and Benelux director; Dailymotion UK MD and Europe/sales VP for Bebo, which is how she got to AOL.