Entrenched Retail Exec, Mark Williamson Joins CitrusAd

Mark Williamson joins CitrusAd as Senior Vice President Client Development, marking a resolute change in career paths from retailer to supplier side in an effort to serve the growth of many organizations, namely all retailers through ad technology. Over the last ten years Williamson had the fortune of building and scaling retail media programs inside two multinational retailers, Sam’s Club and Ahold Delhaize USA. Empowered as an intrapreneur at both Sam’s Club and Ahold Delhaize, Williamson converted marketing innovations into profitable realities for the respective organizations.

Williamson leaves Ahold Delhaize USA after nearly six years of tenure including his recent role as Vice President and Head of Media Partnerships at Peapod Digital Labs. Prior to his roles at Ahold Delhaize, Williamson held multiple emerging media and marketing positions including Director of Digital Activation & Partnership Marketing at Sam’s Club. By understanding retail organizations from the inside out and having faced the challenges of implementing new adtech, Williamson is now combining his experience with CitrusAd’s retail media IQ and leading adtech to help retailers uncover, grow and reach their full potential as retail media businesses in their own right.

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“CitrusAd offers superior onsite search, display media, and measurement capabilities in an easy-to-use platform.”

Williamson commented, “The accelerated convergence of retail media, shopper marketing and ecommerce marketing has formed a new frontier of connected and programmatic media solutions that improve the performance of both digital and physical merchandising, representing a massive opportunity for retail industry growth as a whole. Now feels like the right time to shift my focus from a single retailer to the broader retail industry. Not only am I doubling down on retail media, I’m also betting big that strengthening and right-sizing the retailer/adtech relationship will rise the tide for all players – including my past employers. I want to be a part of the solution that helps all types of retailers build strong, future-proof and ownable media programs.”

“Mark’s diverse strengths and experience will provide a wealth of value as retailers commence new endeavors and look to expand their footprint in retail media onsite, offsite and instore, leveraging first-party data for all customer marketing. With his passion, wisdom and background, he can improve retail organization structures, speed and efficiency of implementation, retail media as a core function for growth, and add value to our exciting platform innovation and upcoming feature launches in 2022,” said David Haase, CEO, Americas at CitrusAd.

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“Retail media as an industry has massive headroom and is entrenching itself as a legitimate player in the advertising marketplace. The opportunity is such that all retailers can win. The more retailers that are oriented as mature media and data publishers, the more retail media will elevate brands and category sales, and more ad dollars will follow. When assessing CitrusAd from the retailer perspective, it was clear to me that CitrusAd’s tech-obsessed, retailer-first SaaS platform and flexible partnership model ensures sustained value to retail partners, both large and small. CitrusAd was purposefully designed from inception to disrupt obsolete partnership models and address the very pain points I faced and that are shared across the vast and growing landscape of retail media programs. Dozens of retailers across the globe have already come to the same conclusion as I have: CitrusAd is the best partner for the next generation of retail media programs,” added Williamson.

CitrusAd serves a growing list of companies including Albertsons, Lowe’s, CUB, Gopuff, Shipt, Groupon, Petco, Hy-Vee, Wakefern Food Corp, and more that are combining the strength of first-party data with CitrusAd’s retail media technology to help brands connect with shoppers in a more relevant and personalized manner. CitrusAd was named a leader by Forrester, a leading global research and advisory firm, in The Forrester Wave™: Sell-Side Retail Media Solutions, Q3 2021. As cited in the report, “CitrusAd offers superior onsite search, display media, and measurement capabilities in an easy-to-use platform.” CitrusAd also ranked highest in the performance, and measurement and reporting criteria, and received the highest scores possible in 9 other criteria, including partner ecosystem.