• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, July 17, 2013

Publicis Groupe’s Digitas has appointed Baba Shetty chief strategy and media officer, a new post at the digital ad shop.

Shetty will oversee the media, content and social capabilities at the agency, the agency said. He will be based in Digitas' Boston office and will report to Tony Weisman, CEO DigitasLBi North America.

Shetty is taking on many of the responsibilities that had been handled by Jordan Bitterman, who had been the shop’s senior vice president, North America lead for social, mobile and content. Bitterman left the agency in late May to join WPP’s Mindshare North America as chief strategy officer.

Weisman cited Shetty’s 25-year industry track record “of innovation in both the agency and publishing worlds.” He added that Shetty is "uniquely qualified to accelerate Digitas' growing media capability ... creating truly real-time marketing and story-telling.”

Shetty was most recently CEO at Newsweek/The Daily Beast, where he led the relaunch of Newsweek's Web site after the magazine moved from print to an all-digital format.

Prior to Newsweek/The Daily Beast, Shetty worked at Interpublic Group’s Hill Holliday from 2005-2012. While there, Shetty was chief media officer before adding the role of chief strategy officer to his responsibilities.

Before Hill Holliday, Shetty led digital at Fallon Worldwide in Minneapolis. Prior to that, he worked as a marketing communications manager at BMW and spent three years as a principal analyst at Forrester Research.

Shetty's appointment follows a series of significant wins for Digitas. The agency was recently tapped to handle media buying for The New York Stock Exchange and Lenovo, as well as global media planning and buying for Motorola.

Shetty’s appointment also follows the hiring earlier this month of former Apple media executive Tamara Bousquet to serve as an senior vice president in Boston.

Earlier this year, Digitas merged with LBi to form DigitasLBi after Publicis Groupe acquired the latter agency in January.