E-Commerce Advertising Platform Expands Retail Media Team
With the popularity of online shopping reaching new heights, media tech company CitrusAd has made some executive moves to help its retail customers capitalize on this expanding landscape.
CitrusAd is a white-label, self-serve e-commerce advertising platform that enables retailers to monetize their digital shelf space while enabling suppliers to increase sales by launching targeted and cost-effective digital campaigns at the point of purchase.
The company recently made three new additions: Mike Pisula as SVP of product and engineering, and Colleen Cassin and Christina Fonseca, who both were hired as sale directors.
“We are delighted to attract high-caliber executives to our team,” said David Haase, chief development and revenue officer of New York-based CitrusAd. “We are on track to have a mammoth 2021. By providing a comprehensive, future-proofed platform along with a best-in-class team, CitrusAd will fit the needs of the entire retail media ecosystem, allowing brands and retailers to talk with shoppers in a privacy-compliant, consumer-friendly way.”
Pisula came to CitrusAd from Xaxis LLC, where he was managing partner for technology and partnerships. In 2020, he represented media investment company GroupM as a part of the W3C’s Improving Web Advertising Business Group, which was tasked with creating and evaluating internet standards proposals in a post-cookie world. As part of the business group, he was able to inform advertisers and agencies of the impact on how they plan, target and measure digital campaigns. In previous roles, Pisula worked in the financial data industry, as a UNIX analyst, started and sold a web analytics firm to 24/7 Real Media, and worked at WPP for 18 years.
In his current role, Pisula will help connect the technology that CitrusAd has built to other technologies such as existing retailer assets or opportunities in partner expansion. He will help data scientists do their jobs better by building new tools and products that will tap into the data and resources that are available.
“CitrusAd is leaning into new consumer-centric advertising models, not building work-arounds,” said Pisula. “By being fully engaged in the privacy ways of the future, CitrusAd technology will set a new bar, and that will be the standard that companies strive for.”
Cassin and Fonseca are now part of CitrusAd’s growing media sales group, and both will report to SVP of Media Sales Dana Concepcion’s team.
Prior to joining CitrusAd, Cassin was at advertising platform Criteofor more than four years, where she managed a variety of large accounts and agencies within consumer packaged goods, including such categories as beauty, health, home, baby, grocery and pet care. Thanks to her expertise in the health and beauty business, she built some of the largest partnerships in those categories. Cassin will lead initiatives on building out the home, health and beauty business at CitrusAd.
“CitrusAd has taken weeks out of the process with self-serve campaigns that can be live in minutes,” said Cassin. “Their flexibility is extraordinary, which speaks to their great leadership and a great technology that is both innovative and transparent. People follow great leaders, and that is why I look forward to helping brands scale their e-commerce presence through CitrusAd. The opportunity here is for no brand to be left behind.”
Fonseca also joins CitrusAd’s media sales team from Criteo. She was previously a sales lead at the company, managing different accounts within CPG, including grocery, pet, health and beauty accounts. She has more than eight years of advertising experience across account management and sales roles at Viacom and Vibrant Media. Fonseca will focus on selling brands and building a sales team within pet care, as well as categories outside of grocery as CitrusAd onboards new retailers in other categories.
“I have a passion for retail media,” said Fonseca. “CitrusAd’s upper-funnel placement opportunities set them apart from other players in the market. I am impressed with how they have grown and how adaptable they are to market needs. Brands have an opportunity to have a holistic e-commerce approach beyond search, and I look forward to elevating what brands are doing.”
Most recently, Wakefern Food Corp. choose CitrusAd to enhance its grocery e-commerce platform. Using the CitrusAd technology, the Keasbey, New Jersey-based retailer-owned cooperative can now offer brands the ability to launch sponsored product campaigns and display media across its desktop and mobile web e-commerce platforms to enhance the shopping experience for customers.
