CBS Hires Google Exec To Head Interactive Marketing

By Anne Becker -- Broadcasting & Cable, 2/28/2007 1:27:00 PM

CBS hired a Google ad sales executive to head up marketing for its new Interactive division. Patrick Keane, who joins as Chief Marketing Officer of CBS Interactive, spent more than four years at Google, ultimately as head of advertising sales strategy.
 
Keane is tasked with marketing and selling CBS content on emerging media platforms as well as growing its advertising base. He will be responsible for both monetizing CBS' digital content and heading its online research, sales training and search engine optimization. At Google, he was responsible for developing relationships with new advertisers. Before that, he was a VP and senior marketing and media analyst at Jupiter Research.
 
He joins CBS after the company hired investment banker Quincy Smith  to head its new media operations and formed an Interactive team around those efforts. In December, CBS hired Yahoo! executive Michael Marquez as VP, Strategy and Corporate Development, for CBS Interactive.
 
CBS has a deal with Google-owned YouTube to showcase clips of its shows. The company was said to have been in talks with Google for a larger programming deal which fell through, but those talks are ongoing, according to a company spokesperson.