John Halley was named exec veep and chief operating officer of ad sales for Viacom Media Networks, the cable-networks unit of Viacom, the company said Thursday. He will oversee the company’s pricing and inventory, commercial operations, finance and business intelligence functions across the Viacom Media Networks ad sales linear and digital portfolio.
His portfolio extends from Viacom Media Networks’ Music & Entertainment Ad Sales, which covers the company’s adult-focused brands including MTV, VH1, CMT, Logo, Comedy Central, TV Land and Spike, to Nickelodeon Group Ad Sales, which covers the Nickelodeon family of brands.
Halley will report to Jeff Lucas, head of sales for Music and Entertainment and Jim Perry, head of sales for Nickelodeon Group. He will report to Rich Eigendorff, chief operating officer of, Viacom Media Networks, on business intelligence. Halley will remain based in the company’s New York headquarters.
Halley joined Viacom in 2007 as senior veep of ad sales finance, and additionally assumed leadership of ad sales business intelligence in 2008. In this role, he led a major overhaul of the company’s reporting, financial planning and controls functions, while working with Viacom’s senior leadership to facilitate a broad swath of strategic initiatives involving platforms, partnerships, investment and measurement.
Prior to joining Viacom, Halley was CFO of integrated marketing agency Pipeline LLC, and before that spent several years in the music industry, both at PolyGram and as CFO of Time Bomb Recordings, a joint venture of Arista / BMG.
