Spears (pictured) will report to Damon Reeve, CEO of The Ozone Project.

The Ozone Project is the transparent programmatic advertising platform jointly formed by The Guardian, News UK, The Telegraph and Reach.

Spears will be responsible for managing relationships with customers of Ozone’s publisher platform managing the commercial, product and analytics aspects of the platform as well as attracting new publishers.

News UK, Guardian News & Media, The Telegraph and Reach are already live as founding partners of the platform. Spears will work closely with existing and new partners to identify their challenges and provide relevant solutions.

Before being programmatic director at the Guardian, Spears was head of Guardian+, The Guardian’s buy-side function, where he was responsible for growing Guardian+ to represent 25% of the Guardian’s total digital ad revenue.

Reeve said: “Our ambition with The Ozone Project is to unlock unrealised potential for publishers through better use of technology and data, and new revenue streams by providing advertisers with a single sales point for digital advertising inventory. We’re very excited that Danny has joined the team to help us work better with the existing partners and lead on bringing more publishers on board.”