• by Wayne Friedman , April 12, 2024

Krishan Bhatia, formerly a senior ad sales executive at NBCUniversal, has been hired as vice president of global video advertising at Amazon.

Bhatia will oversee Amazon’s TV advertising business including live sports, Amazon Freevee, Twitch, Prime Video Ads and third-party publishers.

He will report to Alan Moss, Amazon’s vice president and global ad sales.

Bhatia had been president and chief business officer for NBCU Advertising Sales and Partnerships. He follows on the heels of senior ad sales executives departing the big TV-movie based legacy media company. 

He was one of several executives who departed NBCU after chairman of NBCU Ad Sales Linda Yaccarino left within 11 months, just before the TV advertising marketplace was set to commence to become CEO of Twitter, now known as X.

While at NBCU, Bhatia focused on new potential “currencies” and audience measurement issues -- areas that many legacy-TV network based companies have been involved in as they expand their streaming services. Advertising brands have been seeking better cross-platform audience measurement from legacy media sellers.

In January, Amazon hired former Walt Disney ad sales executive, Jeremy Helfand, who worked on Hulu, as vice president/head of advertising for Amazon’s Prime Video.