TripleLift is going to have to start catering lunch for the CEO’s office.
That’s because Dave Clark, who’s led the company for the past two years, is stepping down, effective immediately, and is being replaced by a coterie of TripleLifters.
Eric Roza, a board member and managing director at Vista Equity – the private equity business that acquired TripleLift in 2021 – will chair a group that includes Chief Product Officer Andrew Eifler, Chief Business Officer Sonja Kristiansen, CTO Jaison Zachariah and revenue chief Ed Dinichert.
The group is looking for a new CEO to take over by 2025, Eifler told AdExchanger.
But why the sudden change?
Eifler had only this to say: “There’s never really a great time for leadership changes.”
Clark announced his departure in a LinkedIn post, although he didn’t share the specific rationale.
“Our success in CTV and Retail Media, particularly with Amazon, bodes well for the future,” he wrote of his recent run as CEO. Clark is referring to the recent news that TripleLift was named as the very first third-party ad tech company to partner with Amazon’s retail media network for dynamic creative.
The SSP POV
Clark is leaving TripleLift in a strong position to innovate and win, Eifler said.
The company was an early leader to innovate programmatic creative for CTV, and Clark joined TripleLift after a four-year spell as general manager of Comcast’s FreeWheel SSP. And the partnership with Amazon is a coup for TripleLift’s retail media business. TripleLift also integrated 1plusX during Clark’s tenure, extending TripleLift’s tech further with publisher identity and yield solutions.
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“These were bold and innovative decisions,” Eifler said.
But the struggle to cut it as an SSP gets harder and harder every year. TripleLift was once a native advertising specialist and is now an omnichannel SSP, with other contextual and identity solutions for publishers. The company also had steep layoffs last year, losing more than one-fifth of all employees.
Jounce Media, the online advertising research firm, has a monthly supply-path benchmarking report that features a list of 100 SSPs, Eifler said. Staying near the top of that list is a tough proposition – especially when the very top includes the likes of Google, Amazon and Comcast (Clark’s former employer).
TripleLift will keep Clark’s ethos, though, he said, and continue placing its bets quickly when there’s an opening in the market and the company believes in a strategy, as with the $150 million deal for 1plusX in 2022, which was its first acquisition.
“There’ll be an opportunity to play with and test [the new platform],” Eifler said, “and I think there’s a lot of promise.”
