Openings and New Hires at Verve, Yelp, Star Tribune

Every two weeks, Street Fight rounds up some of the latest hires and new openings in the hyperlocal marketing, tech, and media industries. 

Head of Sales Promotion at IBM Watson

Watson Advertising (formerly The Weather Company’s ad sales business) has promoted Jeremy Hlavacek to Head of Sales for the organization. As part of this expanded role, Hlavacek will oversee revenue for Watson Advertising’s premium and programmatic media products, data products, and tech products. Prior to leading sales at Watson Advertising, Hlavacek was Head of Global Automated Monetization at IBM and Vice President of Global Automated Monetization at The Weather Company.

Former Steve Madden CEO Joins Startup as COO

Jamie Karson has joined Shoptiques as Chief Operating Officer. Karson is the former Chairman and CEO of Steve Madden. During Karson’s eight-year tenure as CEO, the company’s market cap reached $1 billion and consistently delivered year over year sales and profit growth.

Board Director Addition at Digital Remedy

Digital Remedy has appointed Keith Kaplan to its Board of Directors. Kaplan brings 20 years of experience to the position. Kaplan most recently served as the Global President of Monetization for King Entertainment, a division of Activision Blizzard. He held positions at Yahoo as Head of Revenue for Genome and Head of Global Agency & Client Development. Before that, he was the President and Chief Revenue Officer of Interclick and President of Adconion Media group in North America.

Local Sales Exec Hired by The Star Tribune

The Star Tribune appointed Brian Kennett to Vice President of Digital Advertising Sales. Kennett has over 15 years of sales and management experience, specifically in the local arena. Kennett was most recently Vice President of Business Development at AffinityX. Prior to his time at AffinityX, he held sales roles at Lee Enterprises and Digital First Media.

Executive Hire at Verve

Mark Fruehan has been appointed Executive Vice President of Enterprise Platforms at Verve. Most recently, Fruehan co-founded Botworx, a global enterprise chatbot platform. He has also held leadership roles at Opera, AdMarvel, and Verisign.

Digital Sales Leader Joins Yelp

Rich Hargrave has taken a role at Yelp as Senior Enterprise Client Manager. Before joining Yelp, Hargrave held multiple positions at companies in the local marketing sphere. Most recently, he was Senior Director of Digital Sales at Hearst. Prior to Hearst, Hargrave worked for Web.com (Yodle) and Hibu.

adMarketplace Appoints CRO

adMarketplace appointed Ariff Quli as its new Chief Revenue Officer. He has deep roots in digital media, marketing, and emerging technology platforms, and over 10 years of executive leadership expertise. Most recently, Quli served as Chief Commercial Officer, Americas, at Blippar. Prior to Blippar, Quili served as President of the Americas of Vibrant Media for 10 years.

Two New Hires at Motista

Motista has brought on Tom O’Sullivan as Executive Vice President and Linda Vetter as Vice President of Marketing. O’Sullivan brings over 25 years of sales and marketing experience to the Motista team. Most recently, O’Sullivan served as SVP of Global Business Development at Analytic Partners. Vetter brings almost 20 years of B2B marketing experience to Motista. Prior to joining Motista, Vetter led marketing for Yes Lifecycle Marketing.

Security Expert Promoted at AppsFlyer

AppsFlyer, the global leader in mobile attribution and marketing analytics, appointed Guy Flechter as its Data Protection Officer. Flechter has more than 15 years of experience in information security and data privacy. Previously, he served as Team Lead in the Information Security Team at LivePerson. The company has raised over $80m in venture capital and works with Facebook, Google, Twitter, Pinterest, Snap, Tencent and 3,500+ other integrated partners.

Facebook is hiring for a slew of ad tech roles.

Amazon is hiring a manager of global events and for other marketing roles.

MomentFeed is hiring account managers and software engineers.

Geoffrey Michener writes the biweekly Movers & Shakers column for Street Fight. Geoff is the founder and CEO of dataPlor, an emerging market data intelligence company. 

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