Conde Nast Taps Santarpia As Chief Digital Officer, Valentino Leads Digital Ad Sales

As part of a broader restructuring, Joe Simon, chief technology officer at Condé Nast, is leaving the company. Fred Santarpia is assuming the newly created position of EVP and chief digital officer, where he will be responsible for the company’s broader digital strategy, including all related marketing efforts.

On the sales side, Lisa Valentino will now lead digital ad sales for the entire company -- a big leap from her previous role as chief revenue officer at Condé Nast Entertainment (CNÉ).

Boasting roughly 1.5 billion video views to date, CNÉ launched its digital video network in March 2013. The Condé Nast unit has distribution partnerships with top Web companies from AOL to Yahoo, YouTube to Twitter.

By some accounts, however, the success of CNÉ’s video strategy has led to internal conflicts between the company’s new and old guards.

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Valentino will report dually to Edward Menicheschi, chief marketing officer and president of the Condé Nast Media Group, and Dawn Ostroff, president of CNÉ.

Valentino will be expected to partner with Josh Stinchcomb, newly named SVP of sales strategy. Stinchcomb is now overseeing brand-related efforts, advertising and revenue operations and partnerships.

For the past two years, Santarpia served as EVP and CDO of CNÉ, where he is credited with overseeing the launch of 14 video channels, along with The Scene -- the company’s recently launched video hub.

In an ambitious bid for video ad dollars, media buyers got their first look at The Scene, in July. Along with CNÉ’s own content -- produced by growing digital departments within Glamour, GQ, Vogue, Wired, Bon Appétit, Brides, and the like -- The Scene is serving as a video distribution platform for ABC News, BuzzFeed, Major League Soccer, Variety, and Weather Channel Films, among others.

As publishers reposition themselves for the digital age, video offers to surest path to big ad dollars. (This year, eMarketer expects $5.8 billion to be spent on video advertising.) The only problem is competition for consumers’ attention -- especially that of coveted millennials.  

Rather than squeezing into a crowded marketplace, however, CNÉ sees itself as filling a void left wide open by video leaders like YouTube and Hulu. “Hulu is about aggregating TV shows, and YouTube is [about] user generated content, but there’s no destination for high quality digital-first content,” Valentino said in July.

Reminded that YouTube has pumped millions of dollars into quality digital-first fare, Valentino still insisted that The Scene has no comparable competition. “There’s no company out there leveraging our brand equity,” she said. 

Along with Gillette’s Clear Gel deodorant and Allstate, Valentino said about 100 advertisers would have the opportunity to buy into The Scene through audience targeting and integrated sponsorship deals.

Other CNÉ video fare includes a documentary series for Vanity Fair entitled “@VF Scandal,” and a tech-focused comic series for Wired dubbed “Retro Grade.” Allure also has a presence with “Cassandra To The Rescue,” which features YouTube star Cassandra Bankson and her attempts to help women overcome their insecurities. 

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