The Brag Media has announced the appointment of Jessica Hunter, who joins the business as general manager of partnerships.
Hunter joins the company with deep experience in the Australian media landscape, having spent almost two decades leading partnerships and sales at Bauer Media, News Corp, Nine and Daily Mail Australia.
Hunter’s appointment immediately follows a near three-year stint as head of brand and agency partnerships with Woolworths Group’s media business Cartology, where she built her team from the ground up and assisted with the launch of Retail Media to a new cohort of customers.
In her new role with The Brag Media, Hunter will be tasked with growing commercial partnerships to ensure the business continues to deliver outstanding results for client partners.
Hunter said of her appointment: “The Brag Media has had an amazing track record delivering triple-digit growth since launch, highlighting the success of their youth culture portfolio with such iconic titles as Rolling Stone AU/NZ, Hypebeast, Variety Australia, The Music Network and Tone Deaf.
“I’m delighted to lead the national partnerships team throughout their next horizon of growth, delivering world-class content, talent and experiential campaign solutions utilising The Brag Media’s in-house creative studio.
“I look forward to continuing the growth and ensuring that our client partners receive top-tier support and award-winning campaign solutions that sit at the centre of youth culture.”
As part of the changes, The Brag Media has also announced that national sales director Stacy Batchelor has been promoted to director of business development and innovations, after leading the sales team for over a year and spearheading triple-digit growth.
Batchelor was the founder of Epic Digital, which was acquired by The Brag Media in February 2022.
Batchelor said: “Jess is an industry guru, we’re excited and stoked to have her. Jess’s experience, personality, and dedication to her clients and staff will no doubt help The Brag grow to the next level. Securing a candidate as qualified as Jess will allow me to focus on business development and innovation, developing new products, onboarding new publishers and bringing media firsts to ANZ.”
Joel King, The Brag Media’s chief operating officer, said: “Jessica is the definition of a blue-chip hire, and we can’t wait to see her take our partnerships team to new heights in 2023 and beyond.
“The Brag Media has delivered outstanding year-on-year growth over the past three years and we are now focused on investment in our partnerships team. Jess has a history of success growing commercial teams and delivering outstanding business results, I’m confident we can expect big things over the coming months.”
“As for Stacy, he’s been a fantastic asset since joining the business as part of our Epic Digital acquisition last year. We’re delighted he’s now overseeing our business development division.”
In February The Brag Media signed an exclusive deal with adtech platform Playwire to represent its advertising inventory across the platform’s publisher network in Australia and New Zealand. Playwire’s family of digital entertainment websites is one of the largest in the world, comprising more than 70 industry-leading brands and over 500 websites across key hard-to-reach verticals, including kids, gaming, parenting, tech and entertainment.
In 2022 The Brag Media launched Variety Australia, acquired The Music Network and Epic Digital, and expanded Rolling Stone to New Zealand. The Brag Media’s network of premium brands now surpasses 40 million monthly page views and nine million Australian users per month, cementing its position as Australia’s largest youth publisher.
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Top image: Jessica Hunter