International Advertising Association UK (IAA UK) announced the appointment of Karen Fraser MBE. Karen joins IAA UK as a Strategic Advisor, to provide guidance on strategic direction and to source solutions to address issues affecting the global advertising industry, particularly in the digital space.
Fraser brings a deep understanding of public policy, industry thought leadership and education to IAA UK, with a range of highly regarded professional experience in roles such as leader of the Advertising Association’s think tank, Credos, for ten years and latterly Co-founder of consultancy Weiser Works. Her credentials include the MBE in the Queen’s 2017 New Year’s Honours list, for services to advertising and equality and diversity, and she has previously won a Harvard Business Review worldwide competition, securing a place on it’s Breakthrough Ideas List for her work on ‘Conflicted consumers’.
Speaking on her appointment as IAA UK Strategic Advisor, Karen Fraser, said: “I am thrilled to be working with Kirsty and the IAA team. I’m inspired by her leadership and energy, and I look forward to partnering with her and the wider IAA network to expand their offer to members. I’ve been particularly impressed by the diversity of leadership within the wider IAA network and look forward to working alongside so many marketing professionals around the world to meet future challenges.”
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Impact announced a partnership with Skyscanner to enable the metasearch engine and travel marketplace to become more efficient and productive with its affiliate partners, globally.
By leveraging Impact’s SaaS platform, Skyscanner will benefit from improved analytics and insights to boost programme success. The platform offers a range of possibilities to ensure affiliate and performance partner marketing is poised for success – from enhanced discovery and recruitment to dynamic payment processes.
This move will give Skyscanner access to all its affiliate and performance partners in one place, enabling it to focus on high value relationships, and to scale and boost its affiliate marketing sophistication. This is also an efficiency play – providing Skyscanner with an advanced affiliate partner solution that will enable greater collaboration among internal teams, and driving success for Skyscanner and its affiliate and performance partners.
Impact’s Alex Springer commented: “Impact’s technology will allow Skyscanner to turbocharge efficiency to enable more productive and mutually beneficial relationships between the travel giant and its affiliate partners. Ultimately, this will enable significant growth, with a key aim being to accelerate bookings on mobile.”
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Mediaocean, the mission-critical platform for omnichannel advertising, and Flashtalking announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement in which Mediaocean will acquire Flashtalking. The combined entity will infuse Flashtalking’s solutions for primary ad serving, creative personalisation, identity management, and verification with Mediaocean’s modern system of record used by the world’s leading brands and agencies.
The announcement comes at a critical inflection point for the advertising industry as marketers seek trusted, independent solutions to manage the rise of big tech. Mediaocean and Flashtalking customers will benefit from comprehensive and future-forward solutions for global strategic planning, omnichannel media management, closed ecosystems optimisation, and financial reconciliation across traditional media, open web, closed ecosystems, and connected TV.
“Bringing together Mediaocean and Flashtalking is an incredible opportunity for our customers, employees, and the industry at large,” said Bill Wise, CEO of Mediaocean. “Flashtalking is the source of truth for digital and CTV ads and Mediaocean is the system of record for all media. Combined, we will deliver comprehensive and future-forward solutions for omnichannel advertising. Most importantly, our platform is not compromised by media ownership so we can focus solely on driving outcomes for marketers and their agency partners.”
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Smart AdServer announced the appointment of respected adtech leader, Teiffyon Parry, as EVP Global Demand to drive continued growth of the company’s demand offering. Parry, who will manage the company’s demand group across North America and Europe, will leverage his strong relationships with agencies, trading desks, and direct advertisers to achieve strong growth targets and accelerate Smart’s demand transformation, particularly across CTV.
Parry is a global adtech leader with extensive experience of working with fast-scaling companies. Serving most recently as Managing Director for FreeWheel Advertisers, he oversaw global product strategy for digital and TV, with a focus on global agency sales and partnerships. Before this, he worked as Managing Director at Adazzle, where he scaled the business before leading the sale to Comcast and its subsequent integration into Strata. Parry brings with him a unique background in demand, along with strong relationships in the digital TV space.
Teiffyon Parry commented: “I’m excited to join Smart at a time of growth, and to use my expertise to help drive the company’s mission to build closer relationships between supply and demand to boost more transparent, data-secure innovation. I look forward to working alongside Smart’s growing demand offering to drive deeper partnerships with key advertising groups globally – particularly within the digital video and TV space.”
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Bristol-based CRM agency, Armadillo, named Andrew Terry as new Head of Strategy. Terry will work across its big-name brands including McDonald’s, Disney and Carnival UK.
Andrew Terry brings with him a rich history of work in the marketing and advertising industries. Most recently Data Strategy Director at Wunderman Thompson, Andrew Terry spent three years working across Shell Drivers’ Club globally, and two subsequent years on its multi-million-pound BT account.
At Wunderman Thompson, Andrew Terry trained up the global team and worked across a wide range of different international markets, optimising the model to be as efficient as possible. Always starting with the question ‘How do we understand customers better?’, Andrew Terry was responsible for using data to inform personalisation and measurement; loyalty and membership benefits being at the forefront of his role.
Armadillo CEO, James Ray, commented: “With the rapid growth trajectory of Armadillo, we value outstanding strategy at the heart of all of our campaigns. From the moment we met Andrew we were blown away by his passion and enthusiasm for results-driven strategy. His vast experience and knowledge were exactly what we were looking for and we’re thrilled to welcome him to the team.”
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Taboola, the company that operates a popular grid-based advertising and content recommendation network across media properties, announced an acquisition to expand its reach further into e-commerce, its first big move since going public in June by way of a SPAC: It is paying $800 million in a combination of cash and stock to buy Connexity, a marketing technology company that operates an retail- and e-commerce-focused advertising network. Connexity has been owned by Symphony Technology Partners since 2011.
Adam Singolda, the CEO and co-founder of Taboola, very much understands the challenges that publishers face, and he sees his company as building solutions to address that.
“We believe the future of the open web is e-commerce,” he said.