MarketCast promoted Amy Fenton from co-president to CEO of the market research and analytics firm.
Fenton, who joined the company in December 2022, takes over the top job after former MarketCast CEO John Batter exited in May to head up advertising workflow software vendor XR Extreme Reach. Private-equity firm Kohlberg & Co. is MarketCast’s owner.
Prior to joining MarketCast, Fenton held senior leadership roles at research firms including Nielsen, where she worked for 25 years, most recently as SVP of global corporate buy strategy. After leaving Nielsen in 2016, she served as chief client officer and CMO at Ipsos and was Kantar’s chief client officer for North America. She currently serves on the board of trustees for the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) and had previously been a board member of the National Brain Tumor Society.
Paul Forgue will continue in the role of president at MarketCast, overseeing finance, legal and corporate IT organizations.
“We are confident that Amy will be a tremendous leader for our clients and employees alike,” Kohlberg partner Ahmed Wahla said in a statement. “With a focus on product modernization through AI and data science, client-centric commercial focus, and talent development, Amy’s leadership best positions MarketCast for the future to arm our clients with real-time predictive data driving marketing [return on investment] for their enterprise.”
MarketCast, based in Culver City, California, was founded in 1987. The company says it provides advertising research to more than 80% of top U.S. advertisers. In the past year, MarketCast has expanded deals with Walmart, Lego and PayPal, renewed its partnership with Nike, and landed new clients including Take-Two Interactive’s 2K Games and Jeff Bezos-backed EV automaker Slate.
