Ex-Fullscreen Exec Chris Puckett Joins The Young Turks Network As Head Of Advertising

The Young Turks (TYT) has appointed its first-ever advertising executive in its ten-year history. The millennial-skewing news network has hired Chris Puckett as the brand’s new VP of Advertising and Brand Partnerships.

According to an exclusive report from Variety, Puckett started his job with The Young Turks Network in New York on January 4, 2016. The new exec arrives at TYT with sales and brand partnership experience from both Fullscreen and BuzzFeed. Puckett, who will report to TYT CMO Praveen Singh, will be in charge of TYT’s push to sell direct advertising and integrated brand partnerships, beyond the network’s current strategy of relying on video ads on YouTube and selling subscriptions to viewers.

“We’ve been focused for years on building audience and content, but we haven’t really focused on ad sales — we’ve let YouTube do the heavy lifting,” COO Steve Oh explained. “We think Chris is the right guy… He knows how to sell content that is broad and sometimes edgy.” Oh added that TYT hopes Puckett can lead a sales team of 6-10 people by the end of 2016.

Puckett joins TYT as the network celebrates its tenth year of daily live streams and works to expand its overall reach. For starters, the network debuted its new Culver City-based studios in July 2015. More recently, TYT hired media reporter Jordan Chariton to help deliver more political coverage before the upcoming 2016 elections.

TYT’s YouTube channel boasts over 2.5 million subscribers and over 2.3 billion collective lifetime views.