Spotify Hires Former AOL Exec to Build U.S. Ad Sales Team

Recently ousted AOL advertising executive Jeff Levick has a new gig with Spotify, according to a source close to the company. A source said Levick has accepted the position of chief advertising officer and will be based in New York, where “he will be building up a strong ad sales team in the U.S. and beyond.”

The development was first reported by PaidContent based on Levick’s LinkedIn account this morning.

Levick comes to London-based Spotify, a digital music service, with more than a decade of Internet marketing experience. After practicing law in the 1990s, he worked at Google from 2001 through 2008, matriculating up the search giant’s corporate ladder from the financial services group to VP of industry development and marketing.

He then joined fellow former Google alum Tim Armstrong at AOL in 2009, hoping to successfully transition the company from an Internet dial-up service brand to a winning online advertising player. Levick left AOL about seven weeks ago.

At Spotify, which has been live in the U.S. for around two months, Levick lands at what is currently one of the digital world’s hottest names. According to an AllThingsD story in early August, Spotify picked up 1.4 million U.S. users of its ads-supported free service in the first month, as well as 175,000 paid subscribers for its promo-free version. According to the report, it has 1.6 million paid subscribers in Europe.