STAMFORD, Conn.—Charter Communications' Spectrum has announced that veteran advertising executive David Kline, who is currently executive vice president at Charter and president of Spectrum Reach, will retire in May.
The company also announced that Kline will be succeeded in May by Jason Brown, Spectrum Reach’s current senior vice president and chief revenue officer. The two executives will work closely together over the next months to ensure a seamless transition.
Kline is a well-known industry figure who has been involved in a host of innovations in the ad and ad tech space during his long 46-year career that have helped shape the advertising landscape across traditional, digital and streaming platforms.
As an executive at Charter, Cablevision (now Altice USA), Ensequence and Visible World (now FreeWheel), he spearheaded the launches of many industry firsts, including linear household addressability, interactive TV applications at scale, and data-infused media campaigns using automation and multi-screen deterministic attribution.
Other innovations include deployment of programmatic advertising across political ads in the 2024 election cycle and the re-selling of local inventory from some of the largest streaming services inside Spectrum’s footprint. Additionally, Spectrum Reach has modernized its total ad infrastructure and platforms to transact media campaigns in impressions, as well as traditional ratings across all platforms.
Since Kline joined the Company in 2015, Spectrum Reach has dramatically grown its advertising business into a nearly $2 billion annual P&L business providing solutions for local, regional and national advertisers to deliver effective, addressable and programmatic campaigns across multiple platforms, Charter reported.
"David is an industry pioneer whose visionary leadership and relentless dedication have been instrumental in transforming Spectrum Reach into an advertising powerhouse,” said Rich DiGeronimo, Charter’s president, Product and Technology. “His contributions continue to drive our success, and his strong relationships have helped us set new standards in and for the industry. He leaves a lasting legacy, and we wish him the absolute best in his well-deserved retirement."
When Kline retires in May, Brown will be responsible for all advertising sales, marketing, product and technology operations for Spectrum Reach. The Reach organization operates in 36 states and 91 markets, with nearly 3,000 employees across the country, providing customized advertising solutions for over 23,000 local, regional and national clients.
“Jason’s deep experience, forward-looking mindset and demonstrated ability to drive revenue growth in the dynamic advertising landscape will be instrumental as Spectrum Reach continues shaping the future of advertising on streaming and linear TV,” added DiGeronimo, to whom Brown will report. “Jason will be an invaluable asset to drive Spectrum Reach to create new growth opportunities and to remain the provider of choice by delivering data-driven, highly targeted and customized advertising solutions for our clients."
Brown joined Spectrum Reach in 2023 and brings nearly three decades of experience in the advertising sales space. Most recently, he served as senior vice president, advertising sales at DirecTV Advertising, where he oversaw all revenue lines for DirecTV and DirecTV Stream products. Prior to the relaunch of DirecTV Advertising, he led sales efforts for WarnerMedia’s addressable business as senior vice president, addressable, local, and political, and was chief revenue officer for Xandr, the advertising and analytics division of AT&T.
Before Xandr, Mr. Brown served as senior vice president, national and local sales for DirecTV from 2012-2019. For the decade prior, he held various executive leadership roles in the media and sales industry, innovating marketplace models for networks in industries such as cinema and digital place-based media. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from Skidmore College in New York.
