Google Appoints Naughton To Lead UK Sales

Google has appointed Eileen Naughton to succeed Dan Cobley as managing director of its UK sales operation, its second-largest market after the US.

Naughton has been with Google since 2006; before that she rose through the ranks of the New York advertising industry to become a president of Time Magazine, but was among those affected by a major cull of senior executives there in 2005.

Second-largest market

With Google she has led the company’s US display advertising business, and most recently was part of a senior executive team overseeing global sales.

Nearly all of Google’s revenues are derived from advertising, and its UK operation brought in £3.4bn last year, 16 percent higher than the previous year – a rate of growth that was Google’s lowest in three years. The figure amounts to roughly 10 percent of Google’s worldwide revenues. Naughton will oversee all ad sales operations, including the main business of selling the adverts that run alongside search results.

She said on Wednesday that she would be arriving on the scene at a time of “great vitality” in Britain’s IT economy.

“The UK is Google’s biggest market outside the US, and is a sophisticated digital marketplace that is home to an increasingly vibrant tech scene,” she stated.

Tax row

Cobley is to shift to a broader role dealing with the marketing departments of major brands across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Google is currently spearheading an effort to divert large brands’ marketing spending away from areas such as television.

In the UK Naughton is likely to face ongoing criticism of Google’s tax affairs, an issue that has brought the company before several Parliamentary inquiries. Google processes its British advertising sales through Ireland in order to avoid paying corporation tax, a common arrangement amongst US IT companies.

Naughton has been active in promoting the role of women in IT companies, helping found a network of female Google executives that included Sheryl Sandberg, who went on to become chief operating officer of Facebook.

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