Movers and Shakers: Havas Media Group, The Trade Desk, Inskin, Liveramp and more

The mobile marketing industry is ever-changing, and that applies to the people as much as the technology. Movers & Shakers is our regular feature following the hottest hires in the industry, so you can keep track of who’s joined which company, and what they’re doing there.

Clockwise from top left: Patrick Affleck, Philippa Snare, Steve O’Hare, Paul Childs, Ciro Montagano, Marco Godina

Afleck to take up UK CEO role at Havas in the summer 
Havas Media Group has appointed Patrick Affleck as its new UK CEO, following the departure of Matt Adams earlier this year, with effect from the summer. Affleck will join the group from Dentsu X, where he is currently CEO.

He has over 18 years’ experience in media agencies, including stints at ZenithOptimedia and Vizeum in both UK and global leadership positions. He also spent three years in the US, where he rose to the position of president of Vizeum US and managing director, media at 360i New York. He returned to the UK as CEO of Fetch and 360i prior to their merger into Dentsu X in 2019.

In his new role, Affleck will be responsible for leading and growing the 500-strong Havas Media Group, which sits within the fully-integrated HKX Village and works with clients including Starbucks, Homebase and Dreams.

“Patrick is a first-class leader, with a proven track record in leading and developing multidisciplinary media businesses,” said Havas Media Group, global CEO, Peter Mears. “I’m delighted to welcome him to Havas Media Group and look forward to seeing how he helps us to continue to deliver more meaningful media experiences for our clients in the UK.”

Snare heads to The Trade Desk from Facebook
The Trade Desk has appointed Philippa Snare as its senior vice president, EMEA. Based in the firm’s London offices, she will be focused on leading the EMEA operational headquarters, driving revenue generation and new client acquisition strategy across the region.

Snare joins The Trade Desk from Facebook, where she most recently led its Global Business Marketing division for EMEA, overseeing large teams across all markets in Europe, Middle East and Africa. In this role, she was responsible for driving revenue growth and market share among leading brand advertisers and agencies.

Prior to this, she served as the CMO for Microsoft UK, overseeing marketing for the entire Microsoft portfolio. She has served in a range of other leadership roles at Microsoft, including sales and marketing director, and Commercial Director for Windows Live. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Coventry University and a master’s in business administration from the Open University. She is a Fellow of the Global Marketing Academy.

She said: “The advertising industry is evolving rapidly as major companies look to deploy data-driven strategies across all their campaigns. The Trade Desk is leading this industry shift and is well positioned to help companies navigate this new landscape in a way that drives value for advertisers, growth for publishers, and improves the consumer experience. I am very excited to join The Trade Desk at a time where so many of my peers and the industry as a whole are looking to employ a more responsible approach to data, privacy and advertising.”

Snare’s appointment builds on a string of recent senior leadership appointments at the Trade Desk as the company looks to scale its growth in key markets. These include Matt Goldberg, EVP for North America; Blake Grayson, CFO; Sandeep Swadia, chief data & trust officer; Calvin Chan, general manager, China; James Bayes, general manager, Australia & New Zealand; and Francois-Xavier Le Ray, general manager, France and Belgium.

Two internal moves at Inskin
Inskin Media, which provides high-impact digital display advertising, has announced two internal moves within its UK commercial team to drive new growth for the business. Angelique Whittaker will be moving from group head to UK sales director, responsible for the UK commercial team. Whittaker has been at Inskin for seven years in the UK commercial team and has established herself both as a driver of commercial success and a valued team leader.

Steve O’Hare will be moving up from group head to trading director, where he will be responsible for working closely with the agency groups to develop deeper and more meaningful partnerships. O’Hare has been at Inskin for six years, in a series of commercial roles.

“Ange and Steve have played a critical part in Inskin’s successes over the years, and I’m delighted to announce their promotions,” said Julia Burton Brown, Inskin sales director, EMEA. “I cannot imagine a better pair to help take Inskin forward.”

Inskin delivers high-impact, brand safe, non-intrusive campaigns to more than 1,000 premium websites in partnership with over 200 major global publishers. The company trades using both programmatic and direct approaches, and can target using contextual, first-party and third-party data. It is headquartered in London and has a presence in Amsterdam, Hamburg, Kiev, Sydney, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Erismann to head up publisher operations at LiveRamp
LiveRamp has appointed Zara Erismann to the role of managing director for EU Publishers. She brings over 15 years’ experience in the technology sector, and most recently built the publisher base across Europe with her former company, Index Exchange.

LiveRamp is a fast-growth technology company driving data-driven marketing. In November 2019, the firm launched a suite of solutions for publishers to build direct and trusted relationships with their audience while improving privacy-first monetisation methods. LiveRamp’s Publisher Solutions, which includes its proprietary Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS), enable publishers to operate in a secure, privacy-focused, people-based environment – a critical provision as many of the world’s largest browsers move to phase out third-party cookies.

Erismann’s new role, located at the company’s London office, will see her working closely with publishers, as well as Privacy and Publisher Implementation teams, to scale LiveRamp’s publisher network.

She will also lead one of LiveRamp’s most important initiatives, driving the success of publisher adoption for its Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS) in Europe. ATS enables publishers to connect consented user data with a LiveRamp IdentityLink, which enables people-based advertising on authenticated, cookieless inventory across the open internet. It provides enhanced user privacy and control at the individual level with a single opt-out that persists across platforms and publishers that leverage IdentityLink.

She joins LiveRamp from Index Exchange, where she built the publisher base for companies across Europe including the UK, Germany, France, Eastern and Central Europe, and the Nordics. Prior to Index Exchange, she served as head of publisher services DACH at InSkin Media, and has previously held roles at Shopzilla and Ermed.

She said: “After four years at Index Exchange and over 15 years in the technology sector, I am excited to join LiveRamp at such a pivotal time for the company, when they are expanding so rapidly in the UK and developing meaningful solutions that address publishers’ critical challenges. The EU is a vital growth market for LiveRamp and I look forward to building on our existing relationships and creating new partnerships with EU publishers at this exciting time in the ad tech industry.”

Three senior hires at DSP startup Dataseat
Mobile in-housing DSP startup Dataseat has unveiled three senior hires to boost the management team and accelerate its growth plans. Paul Childs joins as chief product officer from Smadex. Alessandro Giuliani is the new head of customer success & strategy, joining from Liftoff. And Ciro Montagano is hired as head of data science from online mortgage broker Habito, and prior to that, lead data scientist at Location Sciences. Dataseat launched in January with its first seed round of funding of $2.3 million (£1.8 million). 

Ad tech veteran Childs will oversee Dataseat’s product, marketing and supply functions. In his most recent role, Childs served as chief revenue officer at mobile-first DSP Smadex for three years, playing a pivotal role in growing the business into a leading global DSP. Previously, he held sales, marketing, product and regional leadership positions scaling businesses at Loopme, MoPub, Adfonic and InfoSpace.

He said: “This is a very exciting opportunity to team up with David [Philippson] and Paul [Hayton], renowned industry entrepreneurs, and leverage my cross-functional experience to give advertisers a real alternative to existing solutions in the market today. There is a clear opportunity for next generation DSPs built on total transparency to offer advertisers in-housing solutions and address the massive trust issue that exists in ad tech.”

Giuliani will manage the team responsible for onboarding, strategy and success of all clients. Previously, he spent three years at Liftoff the mobile app optimization marketing and retargeting platform, where he was responsible for client success and profitability across the EMEA region. Prior to Liftoff, he was account director at Criteo, responsible for both the attribution business and the launch and growth of Criteo’s in-app retargeting business for EMEA.

Montagano will lead Dataseat’s machine learning capability and optimisation efforts. Previously he was a lead data scientist at Location Sciences working on location data insights, POI attachment algorithms, and supporting customers’ marketing spend optimisation and A/B testing. He also held the role of lead data scientist at Worldpay UK, as well as other data roles in the fintech, marketing and insurance industries.

Dataseat co-founder David Philippson said: “One of the reasons we raised venture capital was to be able to find incredibly talented individuals like Paul, Ciro and Alessandro. As a startup, the initial team you hire is critical to future success, and I feel lucky to bring in experience on this level to join the team, considering how competitive the ad tech market is.”

Godina quits Oracle for Silverbullet
Data marketing services firm Silverbullet has appointed Marco Godina, as senior vice president of product. Godina joins Silverbullet from Oracle, where he was director of Data Cloud client services, EMEA, having previously held roles at Bluekai, Razorfish and, latterly, the Oracle Bluekai DMP.

With more than 15 years’ ad tech experience, Godina will apply his data and digital marketing expertise to boost Silverbullet’s ambitious growth plans, developing and expanding the company’s existing range of data-smart product solutions.

Godina gained in-depth knowledge of product development during his time at Oracle, where he was responsible for the Oracle DMP’s international go-to-market strategy, and building the Oracle Data Cloud’s first cross-product services team. In this role, he spearheaded Oracle’s shift away from the Bluekai 3rd party audience product, as the business moved to Grapeshot contextual targeting and Moat ad measurement offerings.

Silverbullet chief strategy officer, Umberto Torrielli, said: “We’re incredibly proud of our history of attracting and retaining some of the best data experts from across the world. Silverbullet is always striving to provide its customers with the very best technology, and people, to achieve business objectives and Marco will be vital in our future developments. An expert in his field, he has an impressive track record of building exceptional products and client services teams.”