Meet Amobee’s New CTO

For the last 20 years or so “search” has meant typing. But we’re seeing a big shift in the market in which consumers are telling machines what they want and machines are delivering. I believe that Siri, Alexa and Google are just the beginning. Over the next few years, human-machine interactions will evolve in a dramatic way. The market, which has already changed dramatically, will once again become almost completely unrecognizable as smart devices come to the fore.

That’s one reason why I’m joining the Amobee team. As a former VP Officer of product and engineering at Walmart Labs, I have witnessed a stark change in consumer behavior. I believe that Amobee, a technology leader and one of the largest independent marketing platforms, is uniquely positioned to benefit from these trends because of its focus on understanding consumers, their behavior and when/how to reach them.  The Amobee Marketing Platform enables marketers to plan and activate cross channel, programmatic media campaigns using real-time market research, proprietary audience data, advanced analytics, and more. I’m thrilled at the opportunity to lead the company’s data science, engineering and technology teams and bring my experience in big data, IOT, omnichannel digital relationships, and customer acquisition and loyalty to the team.

The major catalyst for change over the last decade has been the smartphone. We now spend more time on our phones than on desktop and rely on our phones to navigate our lives. I believe the next wave of innovations will be around the seamless integration of the physical and the digital. In particular, over the next few years IoT devices will become common and the market will shift to a so-called “zero UI” environment that’s controlled by voice. The consumer of the 2020s will expect devices at home, in the car and in public places to recognize her and help make her life easier.

Telcos are also central to this evolution. Amobee’s parent, Singtel, brings a wealth of operator assets that provide a huge opportunity to bring better understanding and efficiency to this changing marketplace. Telcos have paid relationships with customers. That’s a big differentiator versus web-based companies.

What do telcos have to do with ad tech though? They get visibility into the network, the content and next-generation connected devices. This visibility helps brands engage consumers like never before.

Amobee has historically played a significant role in innovation in advertising technology, having delivered one of the first programmatic advertisements ever (via Turn Platform, the acquisition that closed in April 2017), and has a large pool of highly talented engineers around the globe. With access to Singtel Group’s expansive global footprint, Amobee has the resources to understand the consumer like ever before and create real innovation in the areas of digital marketing, on and off-domain personalization, market research and analytics.

This is especially important when you look at today’s programmatic landscape. The major problems with programmatic today are the quality of consumer data, pricing and viewability. Much of these problems are related to transparency and Amobee is uniquely positioned to provide a greater level of transparency than the competition.

At Walmart, I helped run a team of 200 charged with growing the retailer’s e-commerce business. The team there built adaptive experiences on the web and mobile. At Amobee, my role will be to work with internal stakeholders like sales and product management that will help set the business up for growth. I’ll be the coach for the engineering team and hope to build products that scale.

This is an exciting opportunity to be working at the intersection of marketing, data and all of these emerging consumer touch points. I look forward to playing a role in the next chapter of Amobee’s evolution.

About Amobee

Founded in 2005, Amobee is an advertising platform that understands how people consume content. Our goal is to optimize outcomes for advertisers and media companies, while providing a better consumer experience. Through our platform, we help customers further their audience development, optimize their cross channel performance across all TV, connected TV, and digital media, and drive new customer growth through detailed analytics and reporting. Amobee is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tremor International, a collection of brands built to unite creativity, data and technology across the open internet.

If you’re curious to learn more, watch the on-demand demo or take a deep dive into our Research & Insights section where you can find recent webinars on-demand, media plan insights & activation templates, and more data-driven content. If you’re ready to take the next step into a sustainable, consumer-first advertising future, contact us today.