Hulu’s head of ad sales Peter Naylor departs for Snap

Naylor will be responsible for growing Snap’s advertising business in the US, Canada and Mexico. He will take up the newly created role in May and report into chief business officer Jeremi Gorman.

Unlike Hulu, which operates a tiered subscription model, Snap is reliant almost entirely on advertising sales. Gorman said priorities for 2020 include improving measurement, devising new products and better servicing clients.

“As we continue to scale our advertising business across all geographies, we expect to build out teams in different verticals to support our rapidly growing ad business,” she told investors last week.

“This includes building a global partners team to work with our largest global advertisers to create seamless global planning, hiring more sales operations experts to continue to improve operational rigor in our sales teams and pipeline planning, and generally mature the ways our sales organization operates as we scale over the coming years.”

Meanwhile, Hulu’s ad sales team will now report into Rita Ferro, president of advertising sales and partnerships at the Walt Disney Company.

Naylor joined the OTT service in 2014 after seven years with NBCUniversal.

As Hulu’s user figures increased, the media vet went on to strengthen the streaming business’s commercial proposition, offering advertisers innovative formats such as pause and ‘binge reward’ ads. He also made an effort to win the advertising dollars of DTC brands with the expansion of a creative studio

Naylor’s departure follows that of chief executive Randy Freer, who left the company in January. Hulu’s chief marketing officer, Kelly Campbell, was promoted to president one month later.

Campbell will continue oversee marketing as part of her elevated role.