Williams has been in the direct marketing industry for more than 14 years, working in a variety of roles on the client, agency and marketing services sides.
Prior to joining Abacus Direct Europe, he spent nine-and-a-half years with Claritas, where he was involved in launching the Claritas brand into the UK marketplace. Most recently, he was head of marketing with responsibility for the marketing and communication functions of the data and small business divisions.
DoubleClick acquired the remaining 50% of Abacus Direct Europe that it did not own from Claritas last summer.
"Abacus' cooperative data is unrivalled both in terms of completeness and performance, it's a real privilege for me to join the leading company in this exciting market," Williams said.
Williams will be based in the UK and is Abacus Direct Europe's first international marketing director.
Abacus provides data and research to the direct marketing industry and manages the UK's largest proprietary transactional database of behavioural data from catalogue, retail, ecommerce and publishing markets.
DoubleClick sparked a data protection row when it paid $1bn (拢650m) for Abacus's US operation in June 1999.
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