Ad tech company Sizmek has appointed Liz Ritzcovan to whip the company’s disappointing revenues back into shape.
Ritzcovan, who most recently served as Parade Magazine’s CRO, will officially start in Sizmek’s newly created global CRO position next Tuesday. She will report directly to Sizmek President and CEO Neil Nguyen.
The addition of a CRO position comes about a year and a half after Sizmek sold its TV business to competitor Extreme Reach and 10 months after it rebranded from Digital Generation Inc. (DG). It also reflects a change in corporate structure, separating revenue and cperations departments, the latter overseen by Sizmek CTO Greg Smith.
“A new global CRO will focus 100% on revenue, making the timing ideal for Liz to join the team,” Nguyen said in an email.
Ritzcovan – who also worked at Yahoo, Time Inc. and Omnicom agency Interbrand, will attempt to jump-start Sizmek’s lackluster revenues, though she said she doesn’t have a specific benchmark.
Sizmek’s financial story in 2014 has centered around strong growth in its mobile and video offerings, though it’s underperformed in key regions like North America and APAC. Last quarter, reduced investment in rich media dragged down the company’s revenues. These issues have kept the company from returning to its ideal double-digit growth.
Ritzcovan, who had in her previous jobs worked closely with Sizmek when it was DG and with its ad server, MediaMind, hopes to grow this revenue by creating a clear message around Sizmek’s offerings.
“I want to make sure I’m working closely with the regions in North America to create a cohesive, succinct go-to-market message and oversimplify what can be very complicated,” she said, indicating it’s premature to describe what that message will be.
Because Sizmek has multiple product lines (ad serving, programmatic data, rich media and social media activation, to name a few), messaging had been relatively siloed. However, the company has worked to consolidate those various assets into a single ad management platform called MDX.
But there’s also a consultative element to Sizmek’s business that Ritzcovan hopes to grow.
“Because of all the different businesses in market and the brands on the tech side, [the ad tech landscape] has become overcomplicated,” she said, adding that there’s a push among clients to expose more detail around their ad-buying activity.
“Agencies and brands want to know very candidly and transparently where their ads go, who’s looking at them, how much time they’re spending,” Ritzcovan said.
