• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, April 4, 2012

Jeff Haley, who recently resigned as president and CEO of the Radio Advertising Bureau, is joining Marketron as CEO, effective April 16. Haley is being replaced at the RAB by Erica Farber, who was until recently the executive vice president of the RAB.

Haley’s appointment puts a five-year veteran of the radio industry trade organization at the head of a technology firm whose software, by its own account, handles some 80% of radio ad expenditures in the U.S. The move comes amid the continuing promotion of Marketron’s Mediascape, an online platform which claims to simplify the media-buying process.

In January 2011, Marketron integrated Mediascape with Arbitron's Tapscan Web, an online sales proposal and analysis system, to create a fully automated, Web-based sales and traffic platform for radio advertising, covering functions from campaign planning to analysis, reporting, verification, ratings information and invoicing.

Highlighting the role technology can play in simplifying the ad buying for radio and other media, Haley praised Marketron for “recognizing the need for a more robust and open business platform.” Since it is an open platform, Mediascape can be expanded to interface with online exchanges for buying and selling other kinds of media, including print, TV, online, out-of-home.

Marketron is also at work on the mobile ad front.

According to the company, more than 1,200 radio stations have joined Marketron Mobile in the last year, bringing the total number of radio stations with licenses to 1,950. Marketron Mobile partners and clients including Cumulus Media, Beasley Broadcast Group, Radio One, ESPN Local, Heineken, and Microsoft, and currently executes about 18,000 mobile campaigns per month. The mobile platform is integrated with Mediascape.