Former executive at The Trade Desk to lead Retail Media product line growth as head of dedicated business unit within Moloco

Moloco, a machine learning company, announced that advertising and search product executive Bill Michels has been appointed General Manager of Moloco’s Retail Media business unit. Prior to joining Moloco, Bill Michels was the Executive Vice President of Product at The Trade Desk.

“Our team is looking forward to his leadership and collaboration as we make progress toward our goal of creating a more equitable and profitable digital economy for companies of all sizes.”

Michels brings more than two decades of successful leadership across product management, engineering, data strategy, and business development for some of the definitive companies in advertising and search. He was previously Chief Data Officer at Foursquare after spending 10 years at Factual, most notably as Chief Operating Officer responsible for product, engineering, and data partnerships before its merger with Foursquare. While at Yahoo!, as Senior Director of Product Management, Michels worked in Search, where he launched and led Yahoo! BOSS and several initiatives for international search monetization.

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In this newly created role, he will oversee product and business development for Moloco’s continued innovation in the retail media category. Notably, Michels’ search experience will be invaluable to further capitalize on Moloco’s use of first-party intent signals from shopper’s search, browse, and purchase history to show relevant, highly performant ads right at the point of purchase.

“Bill Michels has been at the forefront of adtech as a product and business leader. His track record of bringing breakthrough technologies to scale speaks for itself. Bill’s vision has helped define the products and businesses that make up the sponsored search and demand-side advertising ecosystems today,” said Ikkjin Ahn, CEO and Co-founder, Moloco. “Our team is looking forward to his leadership and collaboration as we make progress toward our goal of creating a more equitable and profitable digital economy for companies of all sizes.”

Retail media is estimated to reach $100 billion¹ over the next five years and is one of the fastest-growing segments of the digital marketing industry. While large online retailers such as Amazon have demonstrated that retail media drives profitability, sales acceleration, merchant revenue, and customer satisfaction, most companies don’t have the resources, time, or expertise to develop an in-house performant sponsored search solution that scales. Moloco’s Retail Media Platform uses advanced machine learning to securely unlock the value of an e-commerce marketplace’s own first-party user data and automate highly relevant sponsored ads throughout the buyer journey. With Moloco, marketplaces enhance, rather than disrupt, the shopping experience and drive demand for their merchants when and where it matters most.

“Building upon the world-class machine learning infrastructure that Moloco has created for its Moloco Cloud DSP product, we are able to provide marketplaces and their merchants with a powerful platform to grow their business, while providing consumers with highly personalized experiences,” said Bill Michels, GM Retail Media Platform, Moloco. “It’s an exciting opportunity to build a product that leverages rich first-party signals to optimize for the multiple constituents in Retail Media – retailers or marketplaces, merchants, and consumers. Moloco’s Retail Media Platform touches on several components throughout my career and I am looking forward to leveraging them to build something special with the amazing team here.”

Michels holds an MBA from Columbia Business School where he was a Beta Gamma Sigma Scholar. He earned his BA from Colby College. Michels lives in Southern California and will work closely with Moloco’s Retail Media business and product teams around the globe.

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