- Spotify is going to be hiring Lee Brown as its head of global sales effective next month. Brown is currently the CRO of BuzzFeed.
Spotify is hiring Lee Brown as the head of its global ad sales effective next month, according to AdAge. Brown is currently working as the chief revenue officer of BuzzFeed. Before joining BuzzFeed in 2015, Brown also worked as the global head of brand partnerships at Tumblr, the SVP of National Sales at Groupon, and the VP East Coast US Sales and Canada at Yahoo.
Brown will be succeeding Brian Benedik. And Brown is going to report to Spotify CFO and global head of free business Barry McCarthy. Benedik was involved in the hiring of Brown’s hiring. It is unknown who BuzzFeed will hire in Brown’s place.
In an internal note, BuzzFeed founder and CEO Jonah Peretti said that Brown is leaving the company “in a position of strength” as the company is poised to have its largest fourth quarter in history and “profitability for the back half of 2019 and the entirety of 2020.”
Brown oversaw the diversification of BuzzFeed’s ad revenue in areas like programmatic advertising, direct-to-consumer sales, and sponsored content.
Currently, Spotify has 232 million registered users, of which 108 million are Premium. Spotify monetizes free user accounts in the form of ad revenue. Brown will likely oversee the diversification of Spotify’s revenue sources.
