Discovery Communications has hired Beth Greve as its senior vice president of digital ad sales, the network said Monday.

Greve, who joins Discovery from Jaunt Virtual Reality, will lead strategic development for digital sales offerings across all of Discovery Communications’ digital properties including the company’s owned and operated websites, Discovery VR and the portfolio of the company’s U.S. TV Everywhere ‘GO’ apps, said the network.

“More than ever, our clients are focused on digital, data and 360-degree solutions to grow their businesses,” said incoming President of Advertising Sales, Ben Price in a statement.  “The addition of Beth and the expanded responsibilities of Nicole, Keith, Robert and Jill sets us up to do just that.”

Discovery also announced the promotions of several company ad sales executives, including Nicole Cleary to Senior Vice President, National Advertising Sales; Keith Kazerman to Group Senior Vice President, Client Solutions; Robert Voltaggio to Group Senior Vice President, Ad Sales Planning and Operations; and Jill Steinhauser to Senior Vice President, Ad Sales Planning and Operations. 

Comcast’s NBCUniversal unit today said it launched NBCUx, a programmatic digital ad sales facility.

NBCU recently began offering its digital display advertising inventory programmatically to clients, including Target. The company says NBCUx will also offer its digital video and mobile content via a programmatic technology using a private exchange.

Programmatic technology enables buyers and advertisers to use data to target consumers with their ad campaign. Transactions costs are lower, but there is concern that commercial inventory and the content it appears in become a commodity, driving down prices.

Read more at B&Chere.

Santa Clara, Calif.—David Wertheimer, president of digital for Fox Broadcasting, was bullish about the future of digital advertising during a keynote interview Thursday at B&C and Multichannel News’ Next TV Summit.

Asked by B&C contributing editor George Winslow about then-NBC Universal president and CEO Jeff Zucker’s famous 2008 quote about not trading “trading analog dollars for digital pennies,” Wertheimer said that the issue he is concerned most with isn’t how to bring digital advertising up to broadcast levels.

“I like to turn that question on its head,” Wertheimer said. “I like to say, ‘How can we create an environment where the digital advertising’s worth a lot more than the television  advertising?”

He cited as an example a test Fox conducted with interactive digital advertising, in which viewers were given the option of interacting with an ad and being rewarded with a shorter commercial break. “We don’t know all the results yet, but it’s very encouraging.”

Wertheimer also discussed his time working for Steve Jobs at NeXT early in his career.

“One of the things that I learned from Steve Jobs was impatience,” Wertheimer said, joking that it’s not a lesson his current staff is likely glad that he learned. He continued, “The thing that I learned later in my career was to be patient to see the fruit of my impatience take hold.”

He then recalled a conversation he had with former Blockbuster owner Wayne Huizenga in the early ‘90s, saying that he told Huizenga that Blockbuster would go out of business within five years, disrupted by streaming video. Blockbuster would go on to declare bankruptcy—in 2010.

Regarding digital strategy for Fox’s entertainment programming, Wertheimer said, “it’s important to reward people who are paying for content.” Fox therefore makes full seasons of shows available online to customers who can authenticate as a subscriber to a multichannel video programming distributor.

“We make that possible for you,” he said. “Virtually nowhere else can you do that.”

Discussing the future of television, Wertheimer turned to the evolution of the word itself.

“The term television has transcended the medium,” he said, drawing a comparison to the term “hang up,” which used to refer to the physical act placing a telephone receiver on a base to disconnect a call, and now for many people refers to nothing more physical than touching a screen. Television, he said, “means high-quality entertainment, it means longer viewing experience, it means premium content.”