Gannett’s current president of sales development, Kelly Andresen, has been promoted to president of USA TODAY, national sales. Andresen will assume her new role at the start of 2022.
Andresen will lead Gannett’s national sales division, including the USA TODAY network, which encompasses the company’s inventory across its portfolio of local and national sites. She will also oversee Gannett’s national revenue operations, with a mix of retail marketing, branded content, programmatic advertising and events.
Andresen will also head up Gannett’s Sports Media Group – notably, the company’s sports-betting partnership with Tipico, which was announced in July and officially launched in September.
During her tenure at Gannett, Andresen has overseen the company’s national sales strategy, its B2B marketing and events business and its ad innovation efforts. She is also credited with the launch of GET Creative, the USA TODAY network’s in-house branded content studio.
Andresen joined Gannett from The Washington Post, where she was the Director of WP BrandStudio, its content marketing and production arm. She said her branded content expertise will be useful as USA TODAY expands its content-based revenue.
She also plans to spearhead new first-party data-gathering initiatives, with more audience data attached to local markets.
“In 2022, the opportunity is even greater for us to bring insight and value to national advertisers through the other parts of our business, investing in building out our first-party data strategy, taking consumer data people are actively giving us at the local level, and bringing those insights to advertisers at the national scale,” Andresen said.
Since 2016, USA TODAY’s national ad business has seen five consecutive years of revenue growth. Gannett’s advertising and marketing solutions business totals more than $1 billion, based on the company’s 2020 actuals. USA TODAY’s digital ad business accounts for 90% of its annual advertising revenue, according to Chief Revenue Officer Kevin Gentzel.
Updated Dec. 10 to correct information about Gannett’s advertising revenue.
