Baron takes on the role of vice-president of international sales and will head pan-European sales as well as new territories including Russia, Eastern Europe and Asia.
At Microsoft, Baron was Microsoft Advertising's Asia regional sales director and then led the multinational sales force for the US, EMEA and Asia. Prior to that, he headed pan-regional sales in Asia for MSN having begun his sales career at United News Media, EMAP and IPC.
At the same time, Vibrant has hired Carl Jordan as director of publisher solutions in Europe. He joins from Google where he was responsible for providing monetisation and commerce services to media and publishers within the EMEA region. Prior to Google he was the agency sales manager for Emap Metro Online.
He will work alongside another hire, Sheila Williams, who joins as publisher solutions director for the UK. Williams joins from Associated Northcliffe Digital where she was head of digital partnerships.
Craig Gooding, Vibrant chief operating officer and co-founder, said: "We have nearly doubled our staff in London over the last six months in order to grow our existing European businesses and break into new markets in Russia, Eastern Europe and Asia.
"These high powered hires will, on the one hand, help grow our premium publisher network to deliver significant incremental revenues for our publisher partners and, on the other hand, deepen and expand our relationships with advertisers to deliver a suite of solutions based on our proprietary contextual technology."
The senior appointments come alongside a number of other hires including Matt Boak as senior account manager from Situation Publishing; Alex Davies as account manager from media agency Zed; Emma Lacey as account manager from Ciao; and Tom Pepper account manager from Advertising.com;
Joining as account directors are Fiona Salmon from Emap and Fola Sullivan from Microsoft.
Naomi Ferguson joins as head of technology client sales from AOL and Anna Tracey returns to Vibrant's London office from New York to head the UK sales team.
United Kingdom
Vibrant makes string of hires as Baron joins from Microsoft
LONDON - Contextual ad firm Vibrant Media has appointed Jonathan Baron, a senior sales director from Microsoft, to lead its sales operation across Europe.