Centro Hires Former Google Exec for New Division

Former Google Advertising Research Director Gunnard Johnson has joined digital media software specialist Centro as Senior Vice President of Data and Analytics, tasked with creating a new division focused on audience measurement and advanced analytics solutions.

Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Chicago, Centro develops media management software to help marketers engage with audiences across all digital channels. The firm also maintains a granular historical record of every campaign it has executed since 2007, and this data, and associated meta-data, plays a central role in the software the company builds.

Gunnard (pictured) spent the last three years at Google, latterly as leader of the Americas team, and earlier as Director, Display Insights and Analytics. Prior to this he was Marketing Science Director at WPP's TeamDetroit, MD at TNS, Director of Analytics at Valassis, and he spent more than eight years in senior roles at Accenture.

Scott Neslund, Centro's EVP of Media Operations, comments: 'Gunnard's leadership in the field of data and analytics fits well with Centro's mission to deliver clients the best performance based campaigns in the industry. His knowledge in creating the right media mix models for a wide variety of advertisers will be a valuable asset for the large scale campaigns we run on our platform.'

Web site: www.centro.net .