O2 Media expands sales team with four key appointments

O2 Media has boosted its sales team with four new hires, the first raft of key appointments following Shaun Gregory’s arrival as managing director of media in February from Blyk.

Account managers Joanna Matlub, Rachel Price, Thien Y Nguyen and Gregor Smith are the first of several planned hires as O2 Media expands its in-house sales team.

Matlub joins from Yahoo, where she was senior mobile sales manager. A former agency sales manager at Hearst Digital, Price joins from 4th Screen, where she was also an account manager. Nguyen joins from Microsoft, where he was senior mobile specialist, while O2 has poached Smith from Orange, where he held the same position.

The hires come as O2 Media opens up its O2 Top-up Surprises reward scheme to advertisers to allow UK brands to reach O2’s 10 million Pay & Go customers.

The service, topupsurprises.o2.co.uk, was the most-viewed competition website in the first half of 2009, based on market share of visits among all UK websites in the category, according to Hitwise.

Launched in November 2008, Top-up Surprises rewards Pay & Go customers on O2 every time they top up with extra texts and picture messages, as well as holidays, TV and mobile phones.

Blockbuster has been one of the first brands to launch a campaign through the scheme.

O2 customers visiting Top-up Surprises to claim their reward were offered a 30-day free trial of Block­buster’s unlimited rental service, a £10 voucher to spend in a Blockbuster store or online and £1 off the monthly fee if they choose to take up the unlimited rental service.