Krishan Bhatia, Who Helped Amazon Build Presence in TV Upfronts, is Exiting

Krishan Bhatia, who joined Amazon last year to help build its presence on Madison Avenue and in the industry’s annual “upfront” sales market, is leaving the streaming and e-commerce giant, according to an internal memo sent to staffers Friday.

Amazon was not able to offer immediate comment on the executive’s departure, and Bhatia declined to comment Saturday when reached by Variety. Ad Age previously reported on his departure.

Bhatia, who had been a senior executive at NBCUniversal, joined Amazon to build out a sales team as the company ramped up its efforts to win sponsorships and support for its growing array of media and content properties, which include Prime Video and Twitch. During his tenure there, Amazon displayed aggressive tendencies, making an effort to set up a sales presentation on the first day of TV’s so-called “Upfront Week” — a Monday that has been reserved for pitches from NBCUniversal and Fox Corp.

At NBCUniversal, Bhatia was deeply enmeshed with developing new systems of audience measurement, part of a growing effort by many TV companies to find alternative methods of counting viewership as audiences move to on-demand streaming. He also worked on building new revenue systems and infrastructure as NBCU grew more vocal about its efforts to strike e-commerce and data partnerships with advertisers. He was known to be a confidant of Linda Yaccarino, the former NBCU ad-sales chairman who became CEO of the social-media outlet now known as X before leaving in July.

More to come…