Kantar Video Appoints Leigh Newsome as Senior Vice President, Technology

NEW YORK, Sept. 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Kantar Video, the online and mobile video research and measurement unit of Kantar, WPP's insight and consultancy network, announced the appointment of Leigh Newsome as Senior Vice President, Technology. Mr. Newsome will report directly to Kantar Video CEO William A. ("Bill") Lederer and oversee the engineering efforts of the Kantar Videolytics™ platform.

With nearly 20 years of experience innovating products in the digital media industry, Mr. Newsome has been at the forefront of multimedia technology. Early on in his career, he spent 7 years at Avid's Digidesign. Newsome was then co-founder and CTO at AirSpun, Inc., a music and audio syndication solution. Most recently, he was SVP, Product at Thwapr Inc., a mobile video sharing service, working with major media companies. He is a lead inventor or co-inventor on various mobile video patents pending and was a former consultant to Apple for whom he developed a streaming media web application for the first iPhone.

Newsome is also an adjunct professor at New York University where he teaches a graduate course on the technical development, production, and delivery of audio and multimedia content for web and mobile devices.

"Leigh is an accomplished technical player-coach with vision and experience in the digital media space," said Kantar Video CEO, Bill Lederer. "We're excited to have Leigh add his insight and guidance to the engineering management, product development, and partner integration for the expanding Videolytics™ platform."

The Videolytics™ Platform, currently in Beta with major media, technology and advertiser partners, will launch this Fall with powerful new Solutions.

About KANTAR Video

Kantar Video is the New York-based business unit of Kantar, a division of WPP, the world's leading media and marketing services company, built to accelerate global online, mobile, and multi-channel video innovation. At general release this Fall, its comprehensive Kantar Videolytics™ online and mobile video advertising and program research and measurement platform will offer content identification, tracking, measurement, analytics, and optimization for marketers and their agencies, media companies, and content creators and distributors. Kantar Videolytics™ is specifically designed for on-demand ease of use and efficient workflow and analysis to promote better decision-making. Learn more at www.kantarvideo.com.

About KANTAR

Kantar is one of the world's largest insight, information and consultancy networks. By uniting the diverse talents of its 13 specialist companies, the group aims to become the pre-eminent provider of compelling and inspirational insights for the global business community. Its 27,000 employees work across 95 countries and across the whole spectrum of research and consultancy disciplines, enabling the group to offer clients business insights at each and every point of the consumer cycle. The group's services are employed by over half of the Fortune Top 500 companies. For further information, please visit us at www.kantar.com.

About WPP

WPP is the world's largest communications services group. Through its operating companies, the Group provides a comprehensive range of advertising and marketing services including advertising; media investment management; information, insight and consultancy; public relations and public affairs; branding and identity; healthcare communications; direct, digital, promotion and relationship marketing and specialist communications. The company employs 145,000 people (including associates) in 2,400 offices in 107 countries. For more information, visit www.wpp.com.

SOURCE Kantar Video