Sizmek CEO Neil Nguyen will leave the company in the wake of the company’s $122 million private equity buyout by Vector Capital last year.
The company’s board named former Xaxis global COO Mark Grether executive chairman, but has not identified a replacement CEO.
Nguyen will stay on until the end of April to ensure a smooth transition to new leadership. Read the release.
Grether will help grow Sizmek’s business and maintain service levels for current clients, and he told AdExchanger in an email that Vector hasn’t planned further executive changes.
Vector – which also owns digital audio ad tech company Triton Digital – must decide what to do with the company’s assortment of rich media and ad management technologies.
The ad tech company’s value proposition got shaky back in 2013 when it was called DG and sold its significant linear TV ad delivery business to rival Extreme Reach. After that, Sizmek struggled to unite its ad tech components and to send a consistent, understandable message around them.
Turning to private equity allows publicly traded tech companies to figure out their product strategy away from public eyes and public market demands. Vector will likely have to roll Sizmek up with other ad tech components, but what form it will ultimately take before Vector can sell it off again is unclear. That’s something the board, led by Grether, will have to decide.
Grether however is familiar with Sizmek, as he used to be a client.
“I’ve been watching them for years as they’ve changed the way ad creatives and buyers use technology and creative together, in the proportion that works best for the brand,” he said.
Grether has deep background in ad tech, having co-founded Xaxis and served as its global COO for five years during a period of prolific tech acquisition and development that culminated in the recent launch of GroupM’s centralized tech/data unit mPlatform.
Grether believes his Xaxis experience set him up well to guide Sizmek, which he called the world’s second-largest ad server by volume. “Through my time with Xaxis, I have developed deep relationships with brands and a wealth of knowledge especially around monetization of big data that will help to win in today’s digital landscape,” he said.
