• by Melynda Fuller , March 15, 2019

Earlier this week, Meredith Corp announced several new senior publishing roles across its Shape, Family Circle and Healthbrands. All promotions are effective immediately. 

Lee Slattery, vice president and group publisher, will add oversight of Shape to her role as publisher. She continues in that role at Family Circle and Health.

Brendan Smyth has been promoted to publisher of Family Circle and will report to Slattery. Smyth moves to the publication from his former position of publisher of Health.

Finally, Maria Jakubek is Health’s new publisher, reporting to Slattery. She was previously advertising director of Shape.

The promotions comes during a busy week at Meredith. Dan Wakefeld was named EIC of People, following  the departure of Jess Cagle, and Chief Strategy Officer Catherine Levene was promoted to president and Chief Digital Officer of the company’s National Media Group.

Separately, digital-publisher focused technology company Pub Ocean launched a revenue operations consultancy service for publishers. Media industry vets Justin Festa and Manny Balbin will head the new entity.

Festa and Balbin will be based in the company’s New York headquarters, providing clients with expert guidance to support their use of the company’s real-time revenue attribution solution LiveYield, including the implementation of the solution to garner top profit.

The new hires bring with them a wealth of experience across the digital publishing sphere.

Prior to his role at Pub Ocean, Festa was Chief Digital Officer at digital media firm LittleThings and was an advisor for the Decentralized News Network. Balbin comes to Pub Ocean from SheKnows Media, where he was senior vice president, advertising solutions. At SheKnows Media, Balbin was also responsible for driving advertising product strategy and innovation.

In their new roles at Pub Ocean, Festa and Balbin will also offer business and revenue analysis, in addition to ongoing yield management.

LiveYield launched earlier this year. Founder and CEO Chris Ingham Brooke told Publishers Daily at the time it levels the playing ground: “Publishers need to re-learn how to analyze revenue. LiveYield offers publishers the key to unlocking granular-level analytics, which gives them the same visibility advertisers have enjoyed for years."