eBay's general sales manager Adam Krass is switching to GroupM trading desk Xaxis as head of operations.
The role is newly created as Xaxis beefs up its local operation. Krass will work with general manager Esther Carlsen and report into operations director Timothy Whitfield.
Krass has been with eBay for five years and follows another senior manager out of the door.
eBay general manager JJ Eastwood left the company to join Rocket Fuel in June, building out the programmatic platform's Australian operation.
Krass and Eastwood helped launch eBay's programmatic platform two years ago.
Krass, who finishes at eBay today, said he was looking forward to joining Xaxis and that the two companies were "pretty similar" in the way that they operate, and owned their own data management platforms. "It's exciting. Xaxis and GroupM are both very tech-focused. I'm looking forward to joining the team." He will join the firm in two weeks.
Whitfield said the group was “very excited that Adam has decided to join our ever growing family at Xaxis. He has years of experience from the publisher side, which will add a whole new dimension to our business.”
As the rise of trading desks and the volume of advertising bought and sold via exchanges continues to more than double in size year on year, so the talent crunch continues to bite.
Demand for technologically-savvy media sales people remains high, but both publishers and agencies, as well as tech platforms, are hiring people from outside their traditional sets, in one case, at GroupM, a rocket scientist.
More commonly though, advertising firms are turning to finance people, those with experience of derivative markets and those with an ability to derive insights, models and stories from the numbers.
The rationale is that it might be more productive to teach numbers people media than media people analytics and data skills.
It is not yet clear who is replacing Krass or Eastwood at eBay.
Updated: It is now more clear. "James Young who was the head of ad sales operations will take on an expanded role as head of advertising sales," a spokesperson told AdNews. "In this role James will oversee the ad sales strategy, operations and business performance/forecasting."
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