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Federated Media, the San Francisco content marketing company that was bought by LIN Media only a few weeks ago, has named well-known online exec Jordan Hoffner as CEO.
The publicly traded Austin multimedia company acquired the “conversational” marketing part of Federated, which has struggled over the years as it has changed both its focus and leadership several times. It was founded in 2005 by John Battelle, who had moved to another new company called Svorn Holdings, made up of Federated’s programmatic advertising business from its acquisition of Lijit in 2011.
Hoffner had been working with LIN — which owns dozens of television stations and also some digital media channels — as a consultant at his firm called Triemt, which had been involved in helping LIN with the Federated transaction. While terms of that deal were not revealed, over the years Federated had raised more than $50 million in venture funding from firms likes Omidyar Network and Oak Investment Partners.
Hoffner has worked in both old and new media, including at Google, YouTube, NBCUniversal and IAC-owned Electus. He had worked with LIN while at YouTube, where he headed content partnerships.
“Jordan brings to Federated Media a strategic, all-encompassing approach gleaned from his vast experience throughout the digital media landscape,” said Vincent Sadusky, president and CEO of LIN Media, in a statement. “He has a recognized ability to set strategy, lead large teams and drive growth and innovation at great scale.”
In an interview yesterday, Hoffner said that the scale of LIN would help take Federated’s many tools in the conversational marketing arena to scale. “There has been a significant increase in interesting content marketing interest by advertisers, which has been rekindled by more ways to distribute and take advantage of its effectiveness,” said Hoffner. “There are many lessons I have learned over the years to create marketing that really makes those advertisers happy and that users also find valuable.”
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
