Movers & Shakers: October 2016

Opening Movers & Shakers for the month of October is news regarding affiliate authority Julie Wood, who joins the TradeTracker network as partnerships manager after a brief stint as a consultant. We caught up with Wood about her new role while bringing you all the significant appointments from around the performance marketing industry.

Ad technicians

This month saw AppNexus copping a bounty of c-suite hires ready for 2017, including Ryan Christensen – previously SVP & GM at Publisher Technology Group – for COO, and Ben John – formerly SVP of engineering – to CTO, capping off a year of strategic partnerships.

Criteo hooked Elie Kanaan to lead its marketing and comms initiatives across the globe in the position of executive vice president. The former VMware VP of marketing for EMEA has over 25 years of experience in marketing and tech from further posts at SAP, Mercury and Oracle.

With news of performance marketing company Media DNA’s acquisition by Smarter Click last week, performance director David Ayre made the move to the newly merged business as UK country manager. In doing so, Ayre joins forces with Smarter Click’s co-founders Ennis Al-Saiegh, Henry Boyson and Joe Gilmore.

Luis Chaves, an internal hire, and Sven Bagemihl, former MD of Captify, have been made managing directors of marketing analytics firm Neustar MarketShare in the UK and Germany respectively – both reporting to Jean-Phillipe Durrios, managing director of international marketing services.

Independent ad tech company MainAd brought on Michele Marzan as its chief strategy officer, a former board member and vice president of IAB Italy, and the CEO of the same country for video marketing specialist Teads.

Agency hires

On the agency front, Publicis Media’s Starcom MediaVest Group announced a new CEO for the UK division. Rachel Forde joins from P&G United, where she served as managing director. Forde made her debut into the industry 18 years ago at ZenithOptimedia, which is also owned by Publicis.

Performance marketing agency NetBooster promoted chief operations officer Thomas Armbruster to chief executive officer, following six years in the business. He replaces Tim Ringel, who leaves due to personal reasons, but remains an independent board member and shareholder.

Senior vice president and general manager of data solutions is the lengthy title bestowed on new Merkle employee Eugene Becker, who joins the US-headquartered performance marketing group from the post of SVP of product and business development at the Nielsen-owned eXelate.

Indian startups

Groupon’s former vice president and ex-Amazonian Pradeep Desai has been taken on by the Delhi-based e-commerce marketplace Snapdeal as its senior vice president of engineering. The hire comes some months after the departure of Snapdeal’s chief product officer, Anand Chandrasekaran, who has now joined Facebook to help develop strategies for its Messenger app.

Meanwhile, also in India, Vertoz, a Mumbai-based ad tech company, has appointed Sajay Dubey to the role of senior sales director, coming from Vubites – Rediff.com, where he worked in a similar capacity as director of sales.

Ad servers

A former Apple iAd executive is now heading up the intent marketing platform iotec. Paul Wright is now chief executive of the group, having held the former post as director of iAd – Apple’s mobile ad platform – across Europe, the Middle East, India, Africa and the Asia-Pacific.

Brand advertising company Undertone, a division of Perion Network, announced two senior promotions. Former chief strategy and development officer, Robert Schwartz, has been president and general manager, while co-founder Eric Franchi is elevated to senior VP of business development.

Newspaper publisher Johnston Press made two senior hires with the aim of bolstering its digital and commercial teams. Joining from Lyreco, Drew Carmichael has been appointed sales director for Scotland, while Andrew Bibby joins as group digital sales strategy director, based in London.

Meanwhile, Russell Kenyon becomes digital sales director, leaving the post of head of group sales for Fuel Card Services and VP of sales at LivingSocial.

Self-serve “mobile-first” programmatic technology company Mediasmart onboarded Mo Hussain as UK commercial director to lead sales and marketing, joining from Affectv where he was business director.

Programmatic ad platform Kiosked has named Antti Pasila as its new CEO from his former role of chief strategy officer – what the company has called a “natural evolution” – replacing fellow co-founder Micke Paqvalen, who has now been appointed chairman of the board.  

Following the launch of a new Paris office, the Brighton-based social intelligence specialist Brandwatch has tasked Bertrand Saint-Martin as its VP of France, following his 14 years spent at software company Dassault Systèmes.

Other hires

In other news, enterprise technology company Thunderhead announced the appointment of James Bodha as chief operating officer, an internal transition from his position of chief financial officer.

The “world’s first 360 degree ad platform”, wayve has announced the hire of a former Sizmek employee, Shirley Smith, who previously held the position of UK sales director, joining as commercial director.

And finally, Tailify, a Scandinavian influencer marketing platform, unveiled a new head of sales in Josh Wallin, who joins the company from MediaMath, where he held the title of director of strategic clients for EMEA.