St. Petersburg, Florida-based CitrusAd has hired Mark Williamson as SVP of client development, marking a change in career paths from retailer to supplier side.
Over the last 10 years, Williamson has built and scaled retail media programs inside two multinational retailers, Sam’s Club and Ahold Delhaize USA. Empowered as an intrapreneur at both, Williamson converted marketing innovations into profitable realities for the respective organizations.
Williamson leaves Ahold Delhaize USA after nearly six years of tenure, including his recent role as VP and head of media partnerships at Peapod Digital Labs.
Prior to his roles at Ahold Delhaize, Williamson held multiple emerging media and marketing positions, including director of digital activation and partnership marketing at Sam’s Club.
By understanding retail organizations from the inside out and having faced the challenges of implementing new adtech, Williamson is combining his experience with CitrusAd’s retail media IQ and adtech to help retailers uncover, grow and reach their full potential as retail media businesses in their own right.
“The accelerated convergence of retail media, shopper marketing and e-commerce marketing has formed a new frontier of connected and programmatic media solutions that improve the performance of both digital and physical merchandising, representing a massive opportunity for retail industry growth as a whole,” Williamson said.
“Now feels like the right time to shift my focus from a single retailer to the broader retail industry. Not only am I doubling down on retail media, I’m also betting big that strengthening and right-sizing the retailer/adtech relationship will rise the tide for all players – including my past employers. I want to be a part of the solution that helps all types of retailers build strong, future-proof and ownable media programs,” he said.
“Mark’s diverse strengths and experience will provide a wealth of value as retailers commence new endeavors and look to expand their footprint in retail media onsite, offsite and instore, leveraging first-party data for all customer marketing,” said David Haase, CEO of Americas at CitrusAd.
“CitrusAd was purposefully designed from inception to disrupt obsolete partnership models and address the very pain points I faced and that are shared across the vast and growing landscape of retail media programs. Dozens of retailers across the globe have already come to the same conclusion as I have: CitrusAd is the best partner for the next generation of retail media programs,” Williamson said.
CitrusAd is a white-label, self-serve, e-commerce advertising platform that enables retailers to monetize their digital shelf-space while enabling suppliers to increase sales through targeted and cost-effective digital campaigns right at the point of purchase. Successful retailers, across all verticals from 25 different countries, are leveraging the CitrusAd platform and real-time relevancy engine to create a more personalized shopping experience and deliver greater ROI for suppliers.
CitrusAd serves a growing list of companies including Albertsons, Lowe’s, CUB, Gopuff, Shipt, Groupon, Petco, Hy-Vee and Wakefern Food Corp. that are combining the strength of first-party data with CitrusAd’s retail media technology to help brands connect with shoppers in a more relevant and personalized manner.
CitrusAd was named a leader by Forrester, a global research and advisory firm, in The Forrester Wave: Sell-Side Retail Media Solutions, Q3 2021. As cited in the report, “CitrusAd offers superior onsite search, display media, and measurement capabilities in an easy-to-use platform.”
For more information, visit citrusad.com.
