chief product officer Archives

Connecticut, USA – Lemma, an omnichannel Supply Side Platform for emerging formats, has announced it has appointed Ryan Pestano, an accomplished product leader with expertise in digital media, product strategy and business development as its new chief product officer. Pestano brings a wealth of expertise and a proven track record to further enhance Lemma’s product offerings globally.

With his deep understanding of the evolving digital landscape, Lemma says he is well-equipped to lead the development and implementation of its cutting-edge solutions that address the ever-changing needs of modern marketers.

Within the role, Pestano will assume responsibility for overseeing the complete portfolio of products and platforms offered by Lemma. Together with the product and engineering leadership teams, he will work to advance Lemma’s position as a leader in emerging media formats around the globe.

Pestano joins Lemma following a 7-year tenure with IPONWEB, which was acquired by Criteo, where he most recently served as VP of APAC. He’s held leadership roles in product, business development, and solutions consulting working with companies across the programmatic ecosystem in retail media, identity solutions, audience data curation, mobile user acquisition, SSPs, and DSPs.

“I am incredibly excited to join the passionate and dynamic team at Lemma,” said Pestano. “Lemma’s commitment to innovation and providing seamless access to emerging formats aligns perfectly with my own passion for driving transformative solutions. I look forward to working closely with the talented Lemma team to accelerate growth, deliver exceptional products, and exceed our client’s expectations”.

Lemma’s omnichannel Supply Side Platform consolidates diverse advertising channels into a single platform. It offers marketers a comprehensive solution to effectively reach and engage their target audience across multiple digital touchpoints.

“We are thrilled to have Ryan join the Lemma team as our Chief Product Officer,” said Gulab Patil, Founder & CEO of Lemma. “His invaluable experience and strategic vision will be instrumental in shaping our product strategy and driving innovation in emerging formats. With Ryan on board, we are well-positioned to continue providing our clients with seamless access to the latest advertising opportunities and delivering exceptional results.”

Just this month, Lemma has also appointed its director for connected TV (CTV) for the SEA region. Through the leadership of Swaminathan Iyer, the company aims to further strengthen the company’s position as a critical player in the region’s digital advertising landscape.

New York, USA – Optimizely, the digital experience platform (DXP) provider, has recently named seasoned product leader Rupali Jain as its chief product officer. Jain will lend her deep technical expertise to further empower fast and confident innovation in marketing.

Prior to joining Optimizely, Jain held product leadership roles at a number of SaaS software companies, including PowerBI at Microsoft and Qualtrics. In the new role, she will be helping advance pragmatic, growth-driving applications of AI and machine learning to help marketers take control of their workflows, experiment at scale, and deliver digital experiences that would meet and exceed customer expectations.

“Optimizely has an incredible portfolio of best-in-class solutions, and we needed a product leader who has the experience to scale market-leading SaaS platforms. We found that leader in Rupali,” said Alex Atzberger, CEO of Optimizely. “With Rupali’s history of championing user needs and prioritizing innovation that creates tangible customer value, we’re confident that she will play a vital role in our mission to redefine how marketing and product teams work together to create and optimize digital experiences.”

According to the company, Jain’s arrival follows a strong first quarter for the global DXP provider. Optimizely was recognized as a Leader in Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Experience Platforms for the fourth consecutive year. Gartner also positioned Optimizely in the Leaders Quadrant for the sixth year in a row in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Content Marketing Platforms for its ability to execute and completeness of vision.

Jain joins recent executive hires Shafqat Islam and Sebastiaan de Jong, who were named chief marketing officer and chief sales officer, respectively.

“Marketers are contending with a very fragmented software landscape today, as the margin of error continues to narrow,” said Jain. “What drew me to Optimizely was the depth of its insight into how marketers work and the solutions they need to radically improve their day-to-day. I couldn’t be more excited to join a team that understands these unique challenges and is dedicated to keeping customers’ needs as the primary motivation for all we do.”

Sydney, Australia – Global recommendation platform Outbrain has announced key appointments to its C-suite team namely Yonatan Maman as chief technology officer and Andraz Tori in the newly-created executive role of chief product officer. Ori Lahav, who is the current chief technology officer as well as a co-founder and general manager for Israel, will transition his responsibilities and focus on cross-company strategic initiatives, while continuing his role in Israel.

Maman joined Outbrain in 2011 as a senior software engineer and has served as vice president of engineering for the past five years. While leading Outbrain’s research and development team, he brought modern practices and new capabilities to the growing engineering organisation.

Meanwhile, Tori has served as head of recommendations and data science at Outbrain for the past four years, following Outbrain’s acquisition of Zemanta, of which he was a founder.

The newly-appointed executives will support Outbrain’s growth by building upon the company’s existing technologies and product offerings to align with the evolving needs of publishers, brands and advertisers as they increasingly seek to drive measurable outcomes while building deeper engagement with audiences. Both Maman and Tori will report to David Kostman, Co-CEO of Outbrain.

Kostman said, “Under Ori’s esteemed leadership, Yonatan and Andraz have helped transform our engineering team into a world-class technology organisation, built a mature infrastructure fit for supporting our partners, and helped us reach over $1 billion in revenue.”

Meanwhile, Lahav commented, “Yonatan and Andraz bring distinct strengths and capabilities to our team, and we’re fortunate to have a succession stemming from internal drivers of Outbrain success. I’m confident they will have a positive impact on the engineering organisation and the future of Outbrain as our company continues to evolve to meet the needs of this dynamic industry.”

Singapore – Digital ad verification and fraud prevention platform Trafficguard has appointed Elie Shuggi as its new chief product officer. He will be responsible for scaling the company’s product offerings and supporting its growth globally.

Elie brings over 20 years of experience leading global products in major Fortune 500 companies across banking, insurance, and e-commerce. This appointment comes just weeks after the company announced an AU$3m funding raise to support its growing roster of global blue chip clients such as entertainment giant Disney, online travel leader Lux Escapes, and sports betting businesses such as William Hill and Better Collective.

In his new role, Shuggi will be in charge of growing TrafficGuard’s organisational and product capabilities including advancing a ‘Self Serve’ product designed for SMEs, and a social product, focussing on the rampant ad fraud problem impacting social platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Commenting on his appointment, Shuggi said, “I’m thrilled to be a part of this high-performing company and its mission. Helping develop and scale the business’s product portfolio is a challenge I’m truly looking forward to tackling, with the added benefit of working alongside a talented, high-calibre team.”

Mat Ratty, CEO of TrafficGuard, shared that ad fraud is in many ways, a pandemic – one that is affecting companies more than anyone thinks and impacting traditional metrics which govern spend and investment, and it is a $127b problem plaguing the advertising industry today and they are at the forefront of disruption and innovation in this space.

“TrafficGuard is fast becoming the measurement and verification tool of choice for enterprises and SMEs globally. We are in rapid growth mode, and Elie’s experience will complement and drive our product ambition forward – especially towards SMEs, who are the hardest hit by bad actors in ad fraud. We are excited to welcome him to the TrafficGuard team and look forward to bolstering our product portfolio and truly helping brands reach their maximum market potential,” said Ratty.

TrafficGuard said that this is its third key leadership hire after the recent promotion of Matt Sutton to chief operations officer and the hiring of Chadwick Kinlay as chief marketing officer. Together, they bring over 25 years of experience and world-class leadership to the business.

New York, USA – Global adtech data solutions company Lotame has announced key promotions in their global leadership team, namely Eliza Nevers as chief product officer, Hunter Terry as commercial lead for connected TV, and Chris Hogg as global head of platform sales.

Speaking about the promotions, Mike Woosley, chief operating officer at Lotame, said, “We have phenomenal talent leading the company and I want to congratulate Eliza, Hunter and Chris for all their tremendous work over the years. As we continue to innovate to create growth and value across the industry, we look forward to their stewardship to help us drive success in our next phase of growth.”

In her new role, Nevers will continue to operate a first-rate product organisation, develop the talents of her team, and drive global product strategy. In addition to setting the product roadmap and business strategy for 2022, Nevers will be taking a more external focus to help cement the partnerships and relationships required in a very intertwined, complex, and evolving ecosystem.

Speaking about Nevers’ background, Woosley said, “Over the past two years, Eliza has played a pivotal role in helping both marketers and publishers weather digital advertising’s challenges via our industry-leading solutions.”

Meanwhile, Terry will be responsible for advancing Lotame’s technologies, capabilities, and progress in the CTV space on all fronts — customers, data, technology, and partnerships. For Woosley, Terry’s deep experience with Lotame’s core CTV technology and his market-facing experience in all their major markets leave him uniquely positioned to drive the expansion of the business and the partnerships needed to accelerate their success in the CTV landscape.

Lastly, Hogg will be working with Lotame’s regional managing directors and sales executives to align the global organisation and to increase leverage in platform, data, and identity solutions.

Speaking about Hogg’s experience and promotion, Woosley said, “[Hogg] is uniquely positioned to succeed in this new role. As an accomplished leader in our growing UK office, Chris has built and sustained the European businesses through numerous challenges, including a competitive landscape, technology changes, privacy regulations (GDPR, etc.), and Brexit.”

California, USA – Fintech Nium has appointed Robin Gandhi, former vice president of payments at travel management and expense management firm TripActions, to be its new chief product officer.

In his new role, Gandhi will be responsible for defining and executing product strategy to expand leadership in existing markets and pursue new addressable markets for Nium. His role includes end-to-end product life cycle ownership, from product vision and strategy to oversight of technology development. Gandhi will work closely across Nium to ensure continued customer success and market share growth.

During his stint at TripActions, Gandhi has led the product, engineering, design, and operations efforts for the firm’s Liquid offering, which is the next-generation payments and issuing platform that powers TripActions travel capabilities and end-to-end expense management product.

Prior to this, Gandhi was at the Dutch payment platform Adyen, where he was the general manager of its global issuing offering, managing go-to-market and product, as well as running acquiring, product, data, and partnerships for North America. He has also worked with global card schemes, banks, financial institutions, and third-party partners that make omnichannel commerce possible for their merchants across the globe.

Commenting on his appointment, Gandhi said, “I couldn’t be more excited to join Nium and continue delivering on its promise of simplifying the payments experience for businesses and powering frictionless commerce.”

Meanwhile, Prajit Nanu, Nium’s CEO and co-founder, said, “Robin is a deeply experienced leader with an incredible vision for product management and a wealth of industry knowledge across the payments ecosystem. He will be an essential part of our leadership team and I’m personally looking forward to seeing him take our product efforts to the next level.”

Mumbai, India – MediaCom, the media agency by media investment company GroupM, has appointed two new key senior talents to strengthen its core leadership team in India.

The new hires are Shekhar Sharma, the new North and East managing partner, and Averill Sequeira, the new chief product officer.

Sharma has previously worked as the vice president for digital platforms and services at GroupM, where he has been instrumental in spearheading a digital-first approach for brands varying from global to large Indian conglomerates and mid-sized businesses. He has also been an accomplished integrated marketing professional with experience in managing large media investments from global clients to large Indian conglomerates across different vertical

Sharma brings with him over 25 years of diversified experience in the media and marketing industry. His expertise ranges from crafting media strategies, bringing in an insights-based approach to sharpen the strategic planning and deliver ROI for clients. In his new role, Sharma will be responsible for the team’s offices, clients, and growth.

Meanwhile, Sequeira was a GroupM alumnus, with over 18 years of experience across the media, communications, and consulting industry. She specializes in data, digital media, and strategy, as well as creativity. Her formative years were spent in developing audience insight tools and specializing in marketing ROI/ econometric modeling.

In her new role, Sequeira will be leading ‘Seeing the Bigger Picture’, a MediaCom Creative Systems wherein they use the power of data to bring together media and creativity, which was successfully soft-launched in the US and Australia, and is now ready to roll out to the rest of the world.

Commenting on the appointments, Navin Khemka, the chief executive officer of MediaCom South Asia, said that as the media landscape continues to accelerate and evolve, they want to build on the strong track record of helping brands build campaigns that deliver results.

“Today brands want to communicate quickly and effectively, and we believe that together with our new appointments, we will be able to deliver more powerful work for our clients. With having Shekhar and Averill as a part of our team, I am convinced that they’re uniquely positioned to successfully drive the company and are here to put their best foot forward towards offering the best solution to our clients and strengthening our portfolio,” added Khemka.