Future’s Central and Digital Agency Teams have been combined into one Central Agency unit, under the new leadership of Stuart Staves, formerly Advertising Director for the Technology Group. Former Central Agency Head Rob Elms takes on the new role of Head of Trading, while Gerson Barnett has been appointed Head Third Party Revenues & Programmatic.
James Ranson, Future’s Director of Advertising Sales, says: “These changes mark a strategic retooling of the senior ad team at Future to better service our agency partners. Increasingly, agencies and clients want access to high value audiences of interest. Online alone, our brands reach over 13 million affluent and engaged unique users every month in the UK. This structural evolution is designed to help our agency partners access those audiences more effectively."
Prior to joining Future, Stuart worked as sales manager for Haymarket’s FourFourTwo, during which time he achieved record-breaking results, says Future. He then headed Haymarket’s London 2012 Official Media, working across a variety of cross-platform campaigns. Stuart joined Future as Advertising Director for the Technology Group, including TechRadar, T3 and Gizmodo UK. He has overseen a raft of major partnership solutions for clients including O2, CarPhone Warehouse, Microsoft, Dell and Sony Mobile.
Rob has a raft of agency experience, including at MEC, MediaCom and MediaVest, working across an array of clients from the COI and Kraft Foods to Heineken and Fiat. Joining Future five years ago, Rob has run sales teams across the company’s brand portfolio. Gerson was previously Head of Digital Sales at Telegraph Media Group before moving to Future as Advertising Director of the Sport Group and then Digital Sales Director. In his new role, his main focus will be to develop Future's programmatic strategy, ensuring that data is at the core of Future’s commercial offer.
In November 2013, Future launched NGIN, a new commercial unit responsible for driving end-to-end multi-platform content marketing solutions for major UK client and agency partners. NGIN offers in-depth strategy, audience insight, dedicated editorial, content marketing, innovative multi-platform solutions, project management and real-time results analysis, says Future.
