ExchangeWire round up some of the biggest stories in the European digital advertising space. In this week’s edition: New leadership for Sizmek; InMobi and adsquare partner; Yieldify Conversion Platform; Hootsuite acquire AdEspresso; and Spotad land USD$3.5m (£2.8m) in funding.

Sizmek CEO leaves

Leadership changes at Sizmek. The ad tech provider is losing their CEO. After helming Sizmek for the last three years, Neil Nguyen is leaving the company.

Nguyen will be replaced by Mark Grether. The co-founder and COO of Xaxis is taking on the role of Executive Chairman, Sizmek have announced.

Nguyen is planning to stay on for a transition period before Grether takes on the responsibility for strategy and growth of Sizmek.

“Sizmek have developed a strong presence in the digital marketing industry, working to revolutionise how marketers and advertisers balance technology and creative on behalf of their clients”, says Grether. “Impressed by the technological assets and product roadmaps, I look forward to guiding the company and their leadership team, and accelerating the growth of the business, while providing the highest level of service to our customers, who rely on Sizmek’s open ad management capabilities for their multiscreen campaigns.”

InMobi & adsquare partner up

Two mobile experts are teaming up. The mobile advertising platform is partnering with mobile data exchange adsquare. The partnership aims to create a comprehensive suite of in-app audience targeting solutions for brand advertisers in Europe, enhancing InMobi’s mobile consumer profiles with adsquare’s data sources such as TomTom, Mastercard, and Acxiom.

According to the companies, the cooperation will create more audience insights and wider reach both on the InMobi network and the InMobi exchange. “From a data science perspective, machine learning models are only as good as the underlying data that supports them. This partnership builds on this key principle; and the end result is a huge win for clients”, said Ian Anderson, principal research scientist, InMobi. “InMobi have pioneered in creating data science led mobile-first strategies for brands. From utilising data to target the right consumers, to understanding their overall consumer journey, now having access to more signals will take our data-science efforts to unprecedented levels.”

adsquare are simultaneously announcing an integration with mobile video platform LoopMe. After previously collaborating on a mobile video campaign, the two companies are pooling adsquare’s data with LoopMe’s AI capabilities. “The combination of adsquare's data exchange and LoopMe’s Artificial Intelligence optimisation creates a whole new range of mobile marketing opportunities”, explains Tom Laband, CEO and co-founder, adsquare. “Mobile data allows advertisers to target exactly the consumers they want to reach – in the crucial mobile moment.”

Yieldify launch conversion platform

UK startup Yieldify introduce their Yieldify Conversion Platform, a self-service campaign-building and targeting platform. The platform allows marketers to target their chosen audience segments with trigger-based ads and notifications.

Jay Radia, CEO, Yieldify, says: “The Yieldify Conversion Platform takes the experience and data that we’ve amassed over years of running campaigns and made it accessible to anyone – whether you’re a global brand or a growing business. Today’s launch is one of our biggest milestones as a company to date; and we’re excited to bring out even more groundbreaking functionality.”

The Yieldify Conversion Platform is designed to be used by anyone and integrates via JavaScript tag, ensuring a swift speed-to-market and enabling clients to design campaigns quickly and easily thanks to a code-free campaign builder.

The offering is designed for businesses of all sizes and comes with analytics capabilities for optimisation purposes.

Hootsuite buy AdEspresso

Hootsuite want to move on from merely offering a third-party client for social media platforms. Next on the list – social media advertising? Acquiring AdEspresso, Hootsuite are now venturing into offering SaaS advertising solutions for Facebook and Instagram.

As one of Facebook’s main advertising partners, AdEspresso opens up a massive audience of one billion users to marketers and brands. “Social advertising has become a vital aspect of marketing. Companies are looking for ways to reach an active, engaged audience while getting more mileage from content and advertising spend”, explains Ryan Holmes, CEO, Hootsuite, as the motivation behind the acquisition.

According to the press release, “the acquisition represents Hootsuite’s continued investment in delivering a best-in-class social marketing solution to enable organisations to increase awareness, inspire brand loyalty, drive leads, and ultimately revenue.” To that end, Hootsuite are simultaneously launching Hootsuite Ads, an ad optimisation solution for Facebook and Instagram.

The financial terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed. AdEspresso will continue to operate as-is. Prior to the takeover, Hootsuite partnered with AdEspresso on the launch of their initial social ad offering.

USD$3.5m (£2.8m) funding for Israeli startup Spotad

Mobile ad tech provider Spotad receive a big boost. In their first funding round, the Israeli startup have just received USD$3.5m (£2.8m) from investors led by VLTCM.

Spotad are headquartered in Netanya, Israel – and now reach out for the Far East: according to the company, they are the first Western DSP to be active in China, connecting to locally active ad exchanges like Baidu, Weibo, Alibaba, etc.

The new capital is to be invested in further expansion in the region: Japan, South Korea, and India are on the list as potential markets to explore.

Spotad was founded in 2014 by Sagiv Ben-Shaul and Yoav Oz. The ad tech company focuses on machine learning, allowing them to combine advertisers' first-party data with their mobile ad tech platform for targeting and ad serving.