In exciting news in the publisher space, Honey’s Daniel Baptiste-Pilkington has been promoted to Director of Shopping Affiliate Partnerships for the UK and Europe. He has moved up from his previous role of Senior Manager of Partnerships for the UK and Europe. This move into the niche job category shows the increasing usage of the affiliate channel to drive revenue in brands across the continent.
VoucherCodes.co.uk announced the appointment of Darren Sher as its new VP of Product, Engineering and Data. Darren takes up his position with immediate effect, overseeing the product, engineering and data arms of the business, drawing on his extensive experience in product development to drive forward product innovation and customer experience at the company.
Zefr has appointed Emma Lacey as Senior Vice President, EMEA. Emma brings over 15 years’ experience in building successful commercial teams across the advertising industry. In her most recent role, Lacey was part of the EMEA leadership team at OpenX, working as Senior Director of Buyer Development to secure strategic partnerships with media agencies and brands. In addition, she has held senior positions within a range of media and ad tech businesses, including AOL, Sky and Blis.
An exciting partnership has been made between British retailer, Marks and Spencer, and performance marketing agency Journey Further to support their SEO ambitions for its UK Clothing and Home business as part of their MS2 division, after a highly competitive pitch process. Journey Further will be responsible for managing Marks & Spencer UK’s Clothing and Home’s organic growth strategy and will be using its performance-led approach to drive high-quality digital PR coverage, for its menswear, womenswear, lingerie and kids clothing lines. This will focus on creating and measuring relevant content using the agency’s own proprietary tool to improve relevancy and search rankings.
TripleLift, an advertising technology company, announced the acquisition of 1plusX, an award-winning first-party data activation platform. 1plusX has unique technology to help both publishers and advertisers address their audiences with privacy-centric solutions. The media industry has been changing rapidly. Third-party cookies, cross-domain and cross-app targeting, and audience choice are all evolving to better control user information. As a result, digital advertising will need to be rebuilt from the ground up. By joining 1plusX’s privacy-friendly solutions and TripleLift’s scaled media marketplace, publishers can better monetise their content and advertisers can more effectively reach their audiences.
Also in ad tech, Hivestack, the programmatic digital out of home (DOOH) company, announced the appointment of Kira LeBlanc as Global CMO. LeBlanc joined Hivestack in early 2021 when the company announced its global expansion and has since expanded her role to VP of Global Marketing. She will transition into her new role as CMO, effective today (April 1, 2022), where she will continue to lead the team responsible for the company’s global marketing across all of its 25+ markets.
Future plc, the global platform for specialist media, has continued its rapid expansion with the acquisition of two businesses – WhatCulture, a social-first brand focused on the gaming and entertainment market, and data insight start-up, Waive, which uses machine learning to identify social trends. Together, these acquisitions will bolster Future’s diversification of revenue streams, supporting its social media offering and editorial strategy.
INCA has named Paul Scannell, previously the UK’s market lead, as its first regional lead in EMEA. In this newly created role, Paul will become a champion of the region, playing an instrumental part in developing the INCA proposition and delivering further growth and success across EMEA. Paul also recently provided insight for our latest deep dive feature, so make sure to check it out if you’re interested in finding out more about how influencer marketing can work for all brands.
A big congratulations to everybody featured in this month’s Movers and Shakers. We’re looking forward to seeing further developments over the next month! Make sure to let us know if you would like to see yourself or a colleague in the next column.