As Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent for dig­i­tal media sales at NBC, Peter Nay­lor has helped some of the biggest online brands nav­i­gate the chop­py waters of the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion and steer their way to success.

Any­one in media jobs should keep their eye on Nay­lor if they want to devel­op suc­cess­ful careers.

NBC.com, CNBC.com, SyFy.com, Bravotv.com, USAnetwork.com and iVil­lage are just some of the online out­fits whose ad sales Nay­lor takes care of and he was at the fore­front of the launch of the Uni­ver­sal Audi­ence Plat­form, a ‘first par­ty’ online net­work of over 20 NBCU dig­i­tal prop­er­ties with a reach of more than 60 mil­lion unique users every month.

Where’s He From?

As well as head­ing up the ad sales for some pret­ty big prop­er­ties, Peter Nay­lor is also charged with lead­ing the sales efforts of some bur­geon­ing dig­i­tal plat­forms around social TV includ­ing BravoNow, NBCLive, SyFy­Con­nect, Oxy­gen­Live and Sun­day Night Foot­ball Extra, as well as opti­miz­ing each one for mobile and tablet devices.

Pri­or to his role at NBC, Nay­lor led sales for iVil­lage prop­er­ties, where he was respon­si­ble not only for the sales team as well as forg­ing new part­ner­ships and new rev­enue streams for the com­pa­ny. iVil­lage was acquired by NBC in 2006.

Pri­or to his post at iVil­lage, Nay­lor was vp for sales at Ter­ra Lycos and before that he was East­ern Sales Direc­tor for online pub­lish­ing pio­neers Wired Dig­i­tal Inter­ac­tive and he has also held sales posi­tions with Van­i­ty Fair and Spin mag­a­zines and at radios sta­tions includ­ing WSSH in Boston and Marlboro’s WSRO.

As if all of this wasn’t enough, he sits on the boards of The Inter­net Adver­tis­ing Bureau and The Online Pub­lish­ers’ Asso­ci­a­tion and serves on the Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Board of Gov­er­nors for DMG World Media. In addi­tion, he was a found­ing board mem­ber of 212, a New York inter­ac­tive media trade association.

How About Now?

Nay­lor writes reg­u­lar­ly for the Adver­tis­ing press and is a fre­quent guest speak­er at sales and media events. He wrote recent­ly on the seachange fac­ing web pub­lish­ers, who, he believes, should change their eval­u­a­tion meth­ods to reflect view­able impres­sions rather than impres­sions served, which can lead to over count­ing and an infla­tion of the fig­ures. With this piece, he was show­ing he’s still at the cut­ting edge of adver­tis­ing and forg­ing a path for the ad guys through the dig­i­tal landscape.

He’s got some inter­est­ing and worth­while things to say about the future direc­tion of the indus­try too, and for any­one who’s inter­est­ed in work­ing adver­tis­ing, tech­nol­o­gy or media jobs, he’s def­i­nite­ly worth keep­ing an eye on.

When inter­viewed recent­ly about the chal­lenges fac­ing adver­tis­ers as they try to link adver­tis­ing strate­gies to appro­pri­ate con­tent that reach­es frag­ment­ed audiences.

“Tra­di­tion­al­ly, a com­pa­ny would pro­duce ad cre­ative, buy media against a tar­get audi­ence and then research impact,” Nay­lor said. “The first step in today’s era is acknowl­edg­ing that con­sumers are mul­ti­fac­eted. They are not always play­ing the role of “fre­quent busi­ness trav­el” or “pri­ma­ry gro­cery shop­per,” and demo­graph­ic age cells are not always the best proxy to tar­get an audience.

“Ad cre­ative and ad strat­e­gy need to be informed by insights beyond the con­ven­tion­al mod­els. So every­thing flips. Research informs media choic­es and media place­ments should inform cre­ative exe­cu­tion. Research and insights are the top of the funnel.”