• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, January 13, 2014

The Washington Post is expected to Monday announce the addition of Rohan Stevens as programmatic advertising manager. He will oversee WP+, the company's publisher-side real-time bidder for ads. WP+ uses the Washington Post's first-party data.

Stevens will also work with agency trading desks on "programmatic direct" plans for TheWashington Post. Programmatic direct is the application of advertising technologies to direct buys, giving buyers and sellers more control compared to a real-time bidding (RTB) environment. While it does not automate every step, programmatic direct does remove much of the manual labor from the typical RFP process.

Steve Stup, vice president of advertising sales at TheWashington Post, stated: "Rohan's background and his understanding of the programmatic landscape make him perfectly suited to focus on and grow this part of our business," which launched over a year ago.

Stevens was most recently with Liberty Advertising, where he served as director of business development and strategy. He will be based in New York.