Facebook has opened an advertising sales office in Sydney and appointed Paul Borrud as Regional Vice President for Australia and New Zealand.

Paul Borrud will lead the operations and build Facebook’s advertising sales presence in Australia and New Zealand. Borrud was previously responsible for Facebook’s West Coast sales in the US. Prior to Facebook, Mr Borrud worked as the Director of National Sales at Yahoo for the Western Region and managed sales process, implementation, and operations.

Mr Borrud will lead the Australian sales office to provide direct local contact for Australian brands, agencies, companies and businesses, and will build the company’s share of the local advertising market. He will also be responsible for building Facebook’s local team to facilitate the development of marketing campaigns on Facebook.

“We see a lot of opportunity in the Australian market as advertisers look to online media to promote their brands in favour of the more traditional advertising models,” said Mr Borrud.

“With Facebook, businesses have the ability to go beyond simple click-throughs and interact with users through friend networks and all aspects of Facebook including applications and pages,” concluded Borrud.