By Jeanine Poggi
Advertising Age

ABC has hired Mike Dean as its first head of programmatic and data-driven ad sales.

In this new role, Mr. Dean will be responsible for driving ABC's programmatic and data-driven ad sales strategy. During its upfront in May, ABC announced it would begin testing a new level of data-driven ad sales for its online video inventory this summer.

Mr. Dean joins ABC from the online video ad platform Videology, where he served as VP of media platform sales and solutions. He also served as senior business development manager of Bing from 2007 to 2010.

Mr. Dean will report to Pooja Midha, senior VP, digital ad sales and operations, ABC.

ABC's summer trial for online inventory doesn't include staples of programmatic tech such as real-time-bidding and open exchanges, nor does it involve commercial time on TV. Instead the near-term goal is to let advertisers apply data to their purchases in ABC content, something that has been difficult to do, and move toward some of the automation that is common in digital ad sales. ABC also wants to modernize and simplify workflows by moving away from the faxes and emails that are still used when making TV buys.