Patel (pictured) rejoins the company from Vox Media, where she was head of sales research and insights. Prior to that, she spent four years in iHeartMedia’s research team, becoming vice-president of research, insights and analytics.

In her new role, Patel will lead the SmartAudio intelligence insights team, conducting audience analysis, advertising sales metrics and media and digital consumer research. The SmartAudio tool uses factors such as such as weather, pollen counts and sports scores to allow advertisers to deploy different campaign messages at a given time.

Patel will also work with partners to develop new approaches and techniques including artificial intelligence, machine learning and sentiment analysis. She will report to Brian Kaminsky, president of SmartAudio and Analytics Group at iHeartMedia.

Kaminsky said: “We’re thrilled that someone with Hetal’s extensive research background and intimate knowledge of iHeartMedia will be playing such a key role in developing our next generation of data driven advertising, attribution and ad effectiveness products.”