Gudgel brings extensive adtech experience to strengthen Verve’s emerging channels focus and up-end legacy industry mindsets.

Verve, in its pursuit of its next phase of accelerated growth, is enhancing its team with a prominent name in the advertising technology space. The company announced that Grant Gudgel will serve as Verve’s new SVP of marketing. Gudgel brings extensive experience in digital advertising to Verve, and his appointment enhances the company’s leadership team at a time when it’s looking to challenge legacy industry conventions and rewrite the advertising playbook in an identity-challenged landscape.

Gudgel has spent his entire career in the digital advertising space. He spent four years in leadership roles at Teads, where he rolled out and ran all North American operations of Teads Studio, an interactive dynamic creative optimization (DCO) platform for video. More recently he has worked as an independent consultant and advisor on product strategy and M&A in the industry. He previously co-founded an early in-app video ad platform that was acquired by Voodoo.

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“Grant’s broad tech and advertising background, as well as his creative approach to problem-solving modern ad tech challenges, make him a perfect fit to drive forward Verve’s vision to lead the industry in ID-less technologies that we believe offer unmatched opportunities for brands.” said Verve CEO, Remco Westerman. “Grant’s approach aligns well with Verve’s desire to challenge convention and propose better ways of driving media value for our clients.”

This appointment follows a momentum-filled 2024 for Verve that included:

– Acquiring Jun Group for €170 million
– Launching Verve’s purpose-built Brand+ and Performance+ marketplaces
– Releasing new industry-defining research on in-app privacy trends
– The rollout of ATOM 3.0 bringing ID-less, on-device behavioral targeting to 10,000+ apps
– Emerging as the most popular mobile SSP in North America on Google and Apple app stores

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“It’s refreshing to be at a company that is laser-focused on finding opportunities in overlooked places,” said Grant Gudgel. “Verve, thanks to the unmatched value it has unlocked with its patented ATOM technology and other outstanding ID-less targeting solutions, is rewriting how our industry thinks about delivering media outcomes at a time when ‘best-practice’ programmatic tactics suffer from an unfortunate trifecta of audience signal loss, over competition in limited channels and resultant diminishing returns. Verve’s ID-less approach opens up attention-rich cross-channel inventory that has been historically undersold and undervalued.”

Gudgel’s appointment further bolsters the firm’s leadership team following the July hiring of Alex Stil as Chief Commercial Officer. Gudgel’s responsibilities will include further integration of recent acquisitions under the Verve brand, supporting the growth of Verve’s agency and brand-facing business and he plans to help Verve differentiate itself and build on its strengths around ID-less, mobile, DOOH, and CTV inventory. His leadership in transforming large-scale organizations and fostering enterprise-scale services will be instrumental in advancing Verve’s demand-side business, particularly following the recent acquisition of Jun Group, which significantly expanded Verve’s demand-side capabilities.