Donovan Taps Rubicon's Batson To Lead Digital Agenda

In what is shaping up to be a battle of digital talent in Madison Avenue's media processing services business, industry leader Donovan Data Systems (DDS), Thursday named JT Batson president of its digital business operations. Batson, who joins DDS from the Rubicon Project, where he was executive vice president of revenue and global development, will be responsible for overseeing DDS digital systems operations, and for helping ad agencies figure out the best way of incorporating digital media into their back-office trading systems.

The appointment comes as there is increased industry focus on improving the state of digital media buying processing, and as DDS' chief rival, MediaBank, has also recruited a top online industry executive. Earlier this month, MediaBank named former Yahoo display ad platforms chief Bill Wise to run the company. Wise, a key player at online media exchange Right Media, which was acquired by Yahoo three years ago, is expected to accelerate MediaBank's initiatives in that area.

Meanwhile, Madison Avenue is once again turning its attention to improving the way agencies, advertisers and the disparate array of online media entities - publishers, platforms, networks and exchanges - exchange, integrate and process data, thanks to an initiative from Interpublic's Mediabrands and Microsoft. During the international advertising festival in Cannes, France, this week, Interpublic and Microsoft announced that their initiative would be taken over by the American Association of Advertising Agencies, which will build an industry-wide coalition around it.

"DDS has a proven track record of helping to bring order and efficiency to a chaotic media marketplace, and there's no medium that needs that more right now than digital," Batson stated in Thursday's announcement.

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