Independent trading desk Accordant Media on
Tuesday announced the appointment of Paul Longo as managing director, client results. Longo and Arthur Muldoon, co-founder and CEO of Accordant, spoke with
RTM Daily about the appointment.
Longo joins Accordant from MediaVest, a subsidiary of Publicis-owned Starcom MediaVest Group. He was at MediaVest for over four years, where he served as SVP of digital performance media and helped
lead SMG’s “programmatic task force.” Prior to MediaVest, Longo spent four years at Microsoft on its search and bidded media team.
Muldoon said the “client
results” team at Accordant can be thought of as a mesh between the separate account and media teams found at agencies. As such, Accordant’s media optimization teams will be under
Paul’s guidance, as will the majority of Accordant-client relationships.
Longo acknowledged that there are plenty of demand-side platforms (DSPs) out there doing the tech side of things
well, but said he was drawn to Accordant because of its service element. While Accordant is not an agency -- it’s a pure programmatic company -- it positions itself as a tech-enabled service
company. For example, the company offers customized tech based on client needs.
Buying into the “tech-enabled service company” rhetoric, Longo appears to be a natural fit at
Accordant: He has spent the past decade split between the agency side and the tech side.
“The opportunity at Accordant was the best of both worlds -- a blend of my past
experiences,” Longo said.
The managing director position is new at Accordant, created as a result of the company’s growth the past few years. Muldoon said the company has more than
doubled year-over-year in each of its four years of existence, and cited the “success and scale” of the marketplace as one that called for “more expert leaders to come in and support
our growth.”
Muldoon shared that
the company has also elevated Kristin Marlow to the position of managing director, West, to support that growth. She was previously group director, West.
“Technically we have two MDs at
Accordant now,” Muldoon said. However, he estimates that Longo will be responsible for nearly 90% of Accordant’s business, as the majority of its clients are not from the West.
Longo will be based in the company's New York City office. He has been officially working for Accordant for the past week.