GumGum Names New CFO and Announces Organizational and Leadership Restructuring to Advance Growth Strategy

By STS News Desk On Aug 13, 2019

As Global Ad Spend Falls, GumGum Uses Simplaex’s AI, Rivr, to Make More With Less

Patrick Gildea joins as Chief Financial Officer; Ben Plomion appointed Chief Growth Officer; Adam Schenkel & Travis O’Neill promoted to Senior Vice President roles

GumGum, Inc., an artificial intelligence company specializing in solutions for advertising and media, announced both that it has named tech veteran Patrick Gildea to lead as Chief Financial Officer and that it has revamped its organizational and leadership structures to serve the company’s renewed strategic focus. Gildea’s hiring, new leadership roles and expanded responsibilities for key executives are among the changes aimed to drive growth and enhance GumGum’s core advertising business, domestically and overseas.

“A few months ago, we resolved to refocus our corporate strategy on the lines of business on which we were built––serving the advertising ecosystem,” said GumGum CEO Phil Schraeder. “Today’s announcements––Patrick Gildea’s addition to our executive team in particular–– mark our commitment to that strategy. Patrick is a widely respected, high caliber executive, who knows what it takes to get the build on the success of global, tech-enabled businesses like GumGum. We’re all extremely pleased to have him on board.”

Gildea, who fills the CFO position previously held by Schraeder, joins GumGum with extensive experience leading finance and strategy departments at a number of retail, e-commerce and media businesses, including Incentium, M-GO/Technicolor, Gracenote and, most recently, Joybird, which he led to a successful exit as acting CFO.

Along with Gildea’s hiring, GumGum also announced several promotions and role expansions.

“The leadership moves we’re making are aimed at aligning our sales and marketing efforts, leveraging our leaders’ talents by expanding their responsibilities, and bringing perspectives to the executive table that reflect expertise in segments like programmatic and supply side technologies whose importance is surging,” Schraeder explained. “They will allow us to accelerate our pace of innovation, increase our client focus, and multiply our profitable growth now and into the future.”

The announced changes to GumGum’s leadership and organizational structure are as follows:

Ben Plomion has been named Chief Growth Officer, a newly created executive role responsible for creating value for clients, ensuring product-market fit, developing go-to-market strategy, and elevating customer experience. Plomion will now lead GumGum’s Planning and Sales teams in addition to the award-winning Marketing team that he has led for the past several years as Chief Marketing Officer.

Commenting on his new role, Plomion said, “GumGum has grown exceptionally quickly and to maintain our growth we need to create a unified client experience and blend our sales, marketing and client solutions teams. I’m honored to make that my responsibility and I’m eager to take on the challenge.”

“Ben’s rigorous understanding of our customer journey and his focus on client experience insights and measurement will now be unleashed across our business from product development through client delivery,” added Schraeder. “He understands how planning, sales, marketing, product and finance intersect to deliver growth. That makes him the ideal person to formalize our cross-functional capabilities as our business becomes more complex.”

Adam Schenkel has been promoted to Senior Vice President of Commercial Development, a new leadership role responsible for maintaining and growing global advertising partnerships and integrations. In his previous role as Vice President of Programmatic, Schenkel successfully established and grew GumGum’s overseas programmatic business. The advent of this new role answers the need for additional executive level support for GumGum’s growing international business.

“Adam has always been able to establish business partnerships with key industry players and then bring technical integrations to operational fruition,” said Schraeder. “Those qualities, along with his programmatic experience, made him instrumental in our pivot toward programmatic focus in Australia, and they will serve him well as he leads our international programmatic and managed services.”

Travis O’Neil has been promoted to Senior Vice President of Operations, where he will continue to lead GumGum’s Account Management, AdOps, Design, and Business Intelligence team as he did during tenure as Vice President of Operations.

“Travis has a real gift when it comes to assimilating cross-channel insights and delivering efficient single-point interactions,” Schraeder explained. “With his addition to the leadership team, we’ll be able to accelerate our success in elevating client experience and campaign outcomes across the full scope of clients’ GumGum business.”

Ken Weiner, GumGum’s Chief Technology Officer, will now oversee Publisher Development in addition to his Engineering and Product team leadership functions. Weiner has worked to develop products with publishers in mind since he joined GumGum as its first employee in 2008 and GumGum is now placing increased emphasis on productizing solutions for publishers. This role expansion formalizes GumGum’s commitment to bringing the best of GumGum’s engineering and product capabilities to its publisher partners.