Rocket Fuel's sales director ANZ, Liz Adeniji, has left the ad tech firm for a job publisher-side and PocketMath's Michael Correa has exited the mobile platform.
After 15 months at Rocket Fuel, Adeniji, having arrived from Fairfax Media where she was national sales manager, direct response, programmatic and data-driven advertising, has now been lured to Yahoo7- where she takes the reins as head of sales, programmatic, data and native advertising.
Adeniji, whose profile you can read here, is one of many sought after ad tech professionals swimming around in the growing Lumascape of ad tech players – an area which is this year is tipped to be ripe for further market consolidation.
Also this week, sales director at self-serve programmatic mobile platform PocketMath, Michael Correa, has left the business and is now working on his own consultancy, Earwerm.
Correa explained that Earwerm works with brands and agencies to integrate mobile in their strategy and planning.
“We help clients navigate the confusing technology landscape to develop products and services that drive real value for their business, whether that is data, attribution, measurement or programmatic,” Correa says.
The industry moves follow hot on the heels of Monday's news that Rubicon Project’s general manager international, Jay Stevens, exited the company – not long after the departure of Rubicon's country manager ANZ, Adele Hanzlicek.
Many experts have warned since 2014 that the programmatic ecosystem will face industry consolidation. Last year it's thought there were more than 120 major mergers and acquisitions – coupled with a bulk of layoffs at companies such as PubMatic, Rocket Fuel and Turn.
Speaking to AdNews about Facebook closing the sales loop and taking a bite out of the cookie, the social media giant's head of ad tech for Facebook, David Jakubowski, said that ad tech “middlemen”, those who don't have unique content or real users, are the firms most at risk of fading out, as publishers get more savvy, and the switch to people-based marketing intensifies.
“It's the middle men who play in the fray - those are the guys that are most at risk,” he said.
In other ad tech moves, Criteo ANZ's MD Jeremy Crooks exited in December last year and Ensighten's regional director Asia Pacific, Chris Brinkworth, departed in January.
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