• by Wayne Friedman , December 9, 2024

A+E Networks’ longtime head of advertising Peter Olsen is retiring and will be replaced by Toby Byrne, who will become president of advertising sales in February 2025.

Olsen helped transform A+E Networks' ad-sales strategy with deeper data-driven efforts for the company’s growing cross-platform deal-making.

Among his many efforts over this 20-year career at A+E, Olsen ushered in a ground-breaking industry move in 2018 in making new data-driven business outcome guarantees for its brand advertisers. The effort focused on guarantees based around brands’ website visits by consumers, and in-store foot traffic.

Before A+E, Olsen had been executive vice president/director of national broadcast for Mediacom.

Veteran advertising sales executive Toby Byrne became executive vice president of advertising sales in January 2024 for A+E. He will take over responsibility for all of A+E’s platforms -- the History Channel, A&E, Lifetime, and respective digital platforms.

Byrne's posts before A+E included president of advertising sales at Fox Networks Group, overseeing Fox Broadcasting Network, Fox Sports, FX Networks, and National Geographic Channels.

Byrne also held a senior executive position at Zefr, an advertising-technology company working for brands’ messaging on platforms including YouTube, Meta, and TikTok.

A+E Media Group is a joint venture of Disney-ABC Television Group and Hearst.