The Wall Street Journal reorganized its ad sales department to integrate print and online sales.
Sales will now be uniformly managed across the print Journal, the online Journal, MarketWatch.com, Barron’s Online and AllThingsD.com.
Advertisers have been requesting integrated buy options for Dow Jones’ print and online products, but the company’s split ad teams have not been well positioned to collaborate on such sales. Ad revenue for the Journal dropped 6.8% for the second quarter this year.
The new ad sales team will be pushing integrated sales across Dow Jones’ media platforms.
The international sales and marketing staffs have also been combined into one department. Four regional sales vice presidents will now report to Michael Rooney, chief revenue officer at Dow Jones since May.
Advertisers will still have the opportunity to buy traditional, non-integrated ads, and members of the ad sales team will continue to specialize in either print or online.
The new ad sales team includes five vice presidents of sales. Three of these executives -Joe Gallagher, Brian Quinn and Reggie Riley – have previous experience with the Wall Street Journal Digital Network. The two other vice presidents of sales are Don Reis, who came to the Journal in July from multi-media sales at ESPN, and Jessica Sibley, formerly VP of financial advertising and agency relations at the Journal.
The Wall Street Journal, New York, has a total print circulation of 1.7 million. The paper’s online counterpart reports 983,000 paid subscribers.
