Fairfax Media's national agency sales director, Chris Freel, has landed a job at radio streaming business Pandora.
Freel, a Brit, who headed up the selling of advertising for Fairfax mastheads, across all platforms, including more than 200 websites, has now joined Pandora as its commercial director Australia.
Freel, who is well known in adland and recently presented at GroupM's Mlab, joined Fairfax in 2009, rising up the ranks from a business development manager.
Speaking to AdNews, Freel said: "The product is amazing, the team are fantastic and the company are making some great growth investments. 2016 is going to be an exciting year as we build on the firm foundations in Australia and take the Pandora brand and experience to the next level with both listeners and advertisers.”
It was thought Freel may have taken redundancy, following news in November that the business needed to make job cuts, but AdNews understands this was not the case.
In other Pandora moves Annaliese Van Riet is now HR director and Nina Ta has filled the newly created legal director role. Additionally Rachel Page has joined to lead the Melbourne sales team as group sales manager – Victoria, and will report into Freel.
Managing director of Pandora Australia and New Zealand, Jane Huxley, said: “Our ad-funded business model means we are able to provide music discovery to millions of Australians and Kiwis free of charge, and the addition of two new sales leaders will ensure our premium ad products are effective and relevant but also the ideal advertising experience for listeners.”.
In other adland industry job moves, as Criteo ANZ's MD Jeremy Crooks departs the business, news also surfaced this week of another ad tech exit - Rubicon's country manager, Adele Hanzlicek.
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