Kirk McDonald, who has been heading up AT&T’s Xandr advanced advertising unit, has joined the ranks of executives leaving the company.
Mike Welch, who was in charge of product and business development at Xandr, will be the new head of the unit.
Earlier this year, Xandr CEO Brian Lesser left the company when it appeared he wasn’t going to become CEO of AT&T’s WarnerMedia unit, succeeding John Stankey, who was named CEO of AT&T.
Xandr was later made a part of WarnerMedia, now headed by Jason Kilar, the former CEO of Hulu.
Earlier this month, WarnerMedia let go three senior executives including Bob Greenblatt and Kevin O’Reilly, both of whom were key programmers at AT&T launched its HBO Max streaming service.
In the year since AT&T took control of Time Warner, the heads of several other units have departed including the heads of HBO, Turner, Warner Bros and Turner Advertising Sales.
In his new job, McDonald will be chief executive of North America for WPP’s ad buying unit, known as GroupM.
At GroupM, McDonald succeed Tim Castree, who left late last year after being in the job about a year.
