• by Melynda Fuller , March 13, 2018

Over the past few years, Conde Nast has been working to transform itself into a leader in the digital media world, from successfully taking popular publications like Teen Vogue and Self entirely digital to launching its Next Gen Network.

Today the media company announced the appointment of its first Chief Data Officer, Karthic Bala.

Previously head of data strategy, Bala will continue to concentrate on the data capabilities across the company’s business groups, with a focus on building new data-driven businesses and expanding Conde Nast’s ad-supported and consumer revenue streams.

Before joining Conde Nast, Bala was president of Precision Health Data Institute at Everyday Health and director of application development at Viacom, where he oversaw the business intelligence and data-warehousing department.

Bala's appointment comes at a significant moment for the company.

In 2017, Conde Nast acquired CitizenNet, joined by the January acquisition of Lighthouse Datalab in 2018. Both expanded the capabilities of its Spire platform.

Since then, Conde Nast has seen success in several Spire case studies, including a 285% return on client ad spend by a beauty company using the platform and a 44% increase in brand awareness by a retail client using Spire to connect with new customers.

“Karthic has completely transformed our data capabilities and helped build what are a market-leading set of products and offerings in our proprietary Spire platform,” said Condé Nast Chief Digital Officer Fred Santarpia.