Thrad, the AI-native advertising infrastructure platform, has appointed Roger Dunn as chief commercial officer. The hire is particularly significant for the FMCG and consumer goods sector. Dunn's most recent role involved leading global retail media and performance media for Diageo, the international spirits and consumer brands company behind Johnnie Walker, Guinness, and Baileys.

Thrad's platform enables brands to place contextual paid ads inside AI conversation interfaces, a channel that FMCG brands are beginning to recognise as a high-intent environment where consumers ask for product recommendations, compare options, and make purchase decisions. As AI assistants increasingly sit between the consumer and the purchase, Thrad's infrastructure provides the mechanism for brands to show up in those moments. The company is already serving millions of ads per day, with Fortune 500 advertisers live across consumer and growth-stage categories.

Dunn's earlier career spans senior commercial roles at CitrusAd, Criteo, GroupM Commerce, and WPP AUNZ, giving him both agency-side and brand-side perspective. He is the founder of Retail Media Consultancy and the author of The AI Commerce Brief newsletter. His understanding of how major FMCG and consumer goods companies think about retail media investment, combined with a conviction about where that investment is heading, makes him a natural fit for the commercial leadership of a platform building the infrastructure for the next era of digital advertising.

"Retail media works because it meets consumers at the point of purchase. AI conversation advertising meets them one step earlier, at the point of recommendation, when they're asking what to buy rather than scrolling past a shelf. For FMCG and consumer goods brands, that's an extraordinary moment to be present in. It doesn't replace retail media investment, it extends it into every new conversational surface, including the AI shopping assistants retailers are now building themselves." - Roger Dunn, chief commercial officer, Thrad.

"We built Thrad so that any brand can show up natively inside an AI conversation, with the same rigour around context, brand safety, and measurement that they expect from established channels. For FMCG advertisers, that infrastructure is what makes this channel investable rather than experimental. Roger joining as CCO means we now have someone who has sat on the brand side of those investment decisions, and who can translate what we’ve built into commercial outcomes for the world’s largest consumer goods companies." - Andrea Filip Tortella, CEO and co-founder, Thrad.

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