Outbrain boosts senior leadership in APAC as business accelerates
Outbrain has made two senior leadership appointments impacting Asia Pacific. The engagements reflect accelerating business growth of the organisation’s regional and national publisher networks, growing uptake of the Outbrain platform by brands and agencies in the region and the strengthening of its relationships with major media buying groups including Omnicom, IPG and Dentsu.
Overseeing new growth in Asia Pacific will be Ayal Steiner, currently General Manager of Outbrain’s Australia and New Zealand operations. Mr Steiner has been responsible for forging close ties with publishers and brands and cementing the company’s presence in this mature advertising market. Mr Steiner has been appointed Managing Director of Outbrain Asia Pacific and will report to Outbrain’s Head of International, Eytan Galai. He will continue to be based in Sydney.
Also stepping up is Anthony Hearne, currently Outbrain’s Regional Director for Southeast Asia, India & New Markets. Mr Hearne takes a new global role at Outbrain as Vice President, Global Sales Marketing, relocating from Singapore to the company’s worldwide headquarters in New York. He will report to Eric Hadley, who joined the company in Summer 2015 as the Head of Global Marketing.
In announcing these appointments, Mr Galai said, “Anthony Hearne and Ayal Steiner have been pivotal to Outbrain’s success in Asia Pacific and we are thrilled to see them advance to take these important positions. We are confident that these moves will help us to build additional scalability and further support our regional leadership, while ensuring tighter collaboration across our global offices.”
Mr Steiner led the launch of Outbrain in Australia and New Zealand in 2012. He specialises in marketing and product strategy and has extensive experience garnered from within the digital and tech start-up arena.
Mr Steiner commented, “In a time when consumers’ attention is harder and harder to win, I believe Outbrain is an amazing platform that brings innovative and exciting opportunities for brands to engage audiences and for publishers to monetise digital assets.” He added: “Asia Pacific is a mobile-first, digitally smart landscape and I look forward to working with brands and publishers across the region to drive growth further.”
Mr Hearne joined Outbrain in 2012 following a highly successful 20-year career in marketing leadership. Directly prior to Outbrain he was Marketing Director, Paid Content at News Corp Australia. This followed some seven years spent at SingTel Optus, encompassing several roles including: Marketing Director for Optus’ consumer division, Marketing Director at Virgin Mobile and Managing Director of a substantial subsidiary-distribution business.
Mr Hearne said, “I am very excited to be taking on this new challenge and believe that we have only scratched the surface of content marketing and its potential to transform how brands connect with their audiences online.”
He added: “There is much work ahead of us as we continue in our efforts to advance digital marketing and help major brands navigate and connect with consumers at scale through content. Recent product releases like Custom Audiences are great examples of Outbrain’s continued investment in technology and innovation and our commitment to grow this space.”
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