UM Australia snares strategist Maria Grivas from Yahoo! 7 for digital implementation director role
UM Australia is investing in a new level of media-owner relations with the hiring of Maria Grivas as the agency’s digital implementation director.
Grivas is currently Yahoo! 7’s sales strategy manager based in Sydney.
Says UM Australia CEO Mat Baxter: “We are creating this specialist role with the specific purpose of engaging more closely with online publishers during campaign development and implementation. We are looking to ensure that the publishers are able to execute our strategies in the way they have been planned and with maximum effect.”
In her current role with Yahoo!7, Grivas has led go-to-market strategy for key advertising channels including behavioral targeting, video and mobile; developed a pipeline of advertiser-integrated opportunities and worked with some major clients including Emirates, Malaysian Airlines, Subaru, Tourism NSW and Visa. She headed a team of sales strategists and was a senior member of the Yahoo!7 management team.
Baxter added: “Maria’s experience on the media owner side and specifically her expertise developing integrated campaigns with Yahoo!7 and SMG Red will prove enormously valuable to the agency.”
Grivas is the latest in a series of senior digital hires announced by UM in the past weeks.
Earlier this week UM Melbourne announced the appointments of Anna Kismet as director of digital and Monika Kuta as digital communications manager. Brielie-Jean Hudson will also join the agency as senior account manager, digital.
Other new executives to UM have included Kristine Ballensky who has joined UM Sydney as communications strategist; Zoe Scaman who has joined as associate strategy director in Sydney and Lukas Temple who joined UM Brisbane as communications director, digital.
Baxter said more senior talent in digital communications would be appointed in the near future.