Smartly Appoints Moses Velasco as Global Head of Product

AI-Powered adtech company welcomes new leader to drive product-led growth and nextgen vision

(Thursday, January 11th 2024) -  Smartly.io, the AI-powered advertising technology company transforming ad experiences for brands and their consumers, today announced the appointment of Moses Velasco as Senior Vice President, Product. As the global head of product, reporting to Lauri Tarkkala, Chief Technology Officer, Moses will be responsible for scaling products and services that drive business growth and deliver impact for advertisers and channel partners. Moses will be based in the company’s Berlin office. 

Today’s brands and marketers need a future-focused product leader to address existing and unmet needs. Moses possesses a strong record of leading large scale global product operations in social and adtech including at Socialbakers where he led the product management of the marketing suite, globally, and Cision where he was responsible for the company’s innovation lab. His hire delivers on the necessity of keeping pace with the shifting marketplace and bringing growth and product innovation closer together. 

Moses’ appointment comes at a time of scaled innovation at the company spanning the entire Smartly Advertising Platform, including the launch of Smartly’s generative AI tooling for creative and campaign automation and new cross-channel reach, frequency and measurement solutions for brands. 

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“We’re at an inflection point in the industry at the intersection of AI technology and advertising effectiveness. Our Smartly platform sits at the center of transforming the advertising experience and Moses is a well-rounded product leader with a pulse on the needs of brands and advertisers. His relevant experience in navigating social and delivering enterprise solutions for marketers is key to our growth ahead.” says Lauri Tarkkala, CTO at Smartly. 

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Prior to Smartly, Moses held leadership roles at GfK, Cision, and Emplify (formerly Socialbakers) and brings with him extensive product management experience in performance marketing, consumer insights, communications and market research. He has deep expertise in leading SaaS platform growth and has spent a career building product and design teams that have captured customers' voices leading to significant growth during his tenure at those companies. At GFK he was responsible for 8 product lines focused on FMCG consumer insights and media; to help marketers leverage consumer insights to segment, target and develop content for use in their marketing, advertising and brand objectives. During his tenure at Cision, he led the innovation lab which launched several successful propositions focused on matching creative with interest based audience segments that greatly improved advertising effectiveness for brands.

Arto Tolonen, previous head of product, will lean into a critical growth area for the company and will continue to lead the Smartly AI lab focused on the important role of GenAI in powering our creative business. Having a dedicated leader in this area allows the Lab to move quickly while keeping a connection to R&D.