Innovid Bolsters Investment in Identity and Measurement, Hiring Several Industry Vets to Drive Strategy and Continued Growth

Former Nielsen Marketing Cloud CTO joins executives from Comscore, Adobe and more to support Innovid’s advancement of measurement across CTV and beyond

NEW YORK, NY (May 20, 2021) – Innovid, the only independent advertising and analytics platform built for television, announced today the hire of several key product, business development and industry vertical hires to help elevate and execute its vision for measurement and identity. Among them is Nielsen Marketing Cloud CTO Arik Shahar, who joins Innovid as SVP, Identity and Measurement, where he will refine the company’s identity strategy, and align data and measurement initiatives across product lines. Prior to Nielsen, Shahar was head of product at Exelate.

“Without an ability to resolve identity, today’s advertisers are unable to accurately map the reach, frequency and relevance of their messages, while publishers have a more difficult time understanding their audiences,” said Shahar. “While most of the industry is focused on web and mobile-based identity, cookieless channels like CTV which are still in its infancy, are in need of solutions as well. It’s clear that Innovid has been leading the path in CTV, and I’ve joined the company to steward in the next wave of identity resolution with the most innovative and trusted partner in the space.”

In addition to Shahar, Innovid will add a number of seasoned industry executives to bolster its product, business development and industry vertical teams.

Innovid is more than doubling the size of its product team to advance solutions for measurement and identity, enhance self-service tools, and expand partner integrations. The company’s expanded business development team will align with the company’s vision for interoperability and, finally, the industry team additions will help create relationships with new brands and architect verticalized strategies and solutions to address the needs of growing verticals.

This hiring growth comes on the heels of Integral Ad Science vet Dale Older joining as Innovid’s first Chief Product Officer last October. Older was tasked with setting and overseeing the execution of Innovid’s product vision including strategy and management across Innovid’s suite of omni-channel solutions serving the needs of the world’s largest brands, agencies and publishers.

Innovid is committed to putting innovation first through building unique solutions that help the market move forward. As issues like deprecation of the cookie, privacy and other industry related headwinds continue to arise, having a seat with both the demand and supply side — in addition to the cumulative knowledge and expertise from the major players across the industry — will help Innovid build solutions that solve for all sides of the marketplace.

New key hires across these teams include:

Product:

Drew Paquette: VP, Identity. Drew joins to help build out the next version of Innovid’s identity strategy and roadmap. Previously, he served as Head of Data Products at 33Across and Analytics Platform Lead at DoubleVerify. Before that, Drew held data platform roles at Accordant Media, Collective and AOL Advertising.

Business Development:

Jesse Weinstein: VP, Business Development. Jesse joins from Nielsen where he spent nearly a decade in various roles spanning business development and digital client solutions.

Patrick Rubin: VP, Business Development. Patrick joins from Adobe where he was Head of TV Partnerships.

Heads of Industry:

Ahed Jendza: Head of Industry, Automotive. Ahed is a former Google & YouTube Automotive lead, prior to Google, she spent time at FCA and in various agency roles.

Barret Roberts: Head of Industry, CPG. Barret is former VP Head of Industry CPG at Pandora. Prior to Pandora, he spent time at Unilever and in various agency roles.

Rounding out Innovid’s recent wave of new hires are Kyle Wendling and Adva Cohen as Directors, Ad Server, Krystal Hoffman as Director, Product Operations and Edward Chan as Director, Measurement. In the coming months, Innovid plans to hire even more additional team members.

“At Innovid, we’re expanding our footprint to solve for the growing gaps and concerns in the TV space,” said Zvika Netter, Innovid CEO & co-founder. “As identity continues to be an unresolved issue, we’re investing in seasoned talent to bring our vision to life and pave a new cookie-less path forward for the entire industry.”

To learn more about identity, download Innovid’s new cheat sheet Decoding Digital Identity here. To learn about Innovid’s measurement offerings, visit www.innovid.com.