DirecTV plants flag in ad marketplace, names chief advertising sales officer

DirecTV is planting its flag in the ad marketplace following its spin-off from AT&T last year with the appointment of Amy Leifer to chief advertising sales officer. This is a new role that will oversee the company’s in-house ad division and TV addressability solutions for brands and agencies.

Since 2011, Leifer has worked within AT&T, which until recently owned DirecTV. She moved to executive VP roles in operations at both Xandr, AT&T's ad tech unit, and WarnerMedia, when DirecTV was merged into those companies in April 2020. In her new role, Leifer will report to DirecTV CEO Bill Morrow.

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With the establishment of a new ad sales leader, DirecTV is focusing on its own portfolio of products and services following its spin-off from AT&T last year. Previously, Leifer oversaw the satellite company’s spot in the ad sales marketplace, which was grouped alongside WarnerMedia’s other products, including entertainment, news and HBO Max.

As of early 2021, DirecTV had lost more than a third of its subscribers since AT&T acquired it in 2015, according to Bloomberg.

Now that its ad business has returned in-house, DirecTV is hoping to work more closely with its clients in addressing their measurement needs, such as matching their data against that of DirecTV and forming custom audience segments. It will also focus on building out DirecTV Stream, its over-the-top service that was rebranded from AT&T TV.

The rise of streaming services has contributed to the fragmentation of TV viewing, driving brands to seek services that can measure the impact of their campaigns in a cross-platform fashion. This kind of flexibility will be top-of-mind for DirecTV going forward, said Leifer.

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“We're going to be on different platforms, we're going to have multiple programmatic integrations…​​we're offering customized solutions that are easy to activate,” Leifer said.

AT&T still retains a 70% stake of DirecTV, with the remaining 30% owned by private equity company TPG. Since the spin-off, AT&T has shed even more of its media assets, including programming under WarnerMedia in a major deal with Discovery.