Ad2Games, an online-games marketing tech firm, has appointed Sheila Kagan as chief operating officer and managing director.
The addition of Kagan, who has 10 years of experience in ad-tech companies, gives Ad2Games a high-profile female executive. Her focus will be on boosting revenue and maximizing advertiser performance.
A native of Tel Aviv, Israel, Kagan previously served as the senior vice president of client development at performance ad company Matomy. She was also the director of affiliate market and operations at online gambling company 888.com.
Ad2Games also said it is opening a new office in São Paulo as the company considers South America to be a key expansion market. Revenues in that region grew more than 350 percent in the past year. Overall, Latin American games are expected to grow from $3.3 billion now to $5 billion in 2017, according to market researcher Newzoo.
Ad2Games raised $9 million last December. It has more than 150 game publishers as clients, including Bigpoint, Gameforge, Electronic Arts, Kabam, Goodgame Studios, and Nexon. It provides an estimated 1.5 million players to game publishers every month.
Johannes Rolf, the former managing director at Ad2Games, will leave his position and become a member of Ad2Games’ advisory board.
“Sheila brings the perfect combination of deep industry knowledge, excellent leadership qualities, and entrepreneurial spirit,” said Ad2Games’ CEO Albert Schwarzmeier, in a statement. “She is a great addition to our management, and I’m very happy to welcome her to our team!”
Berlin-based Ad2Games has 75 employees, and it is part of the HitFox Group.
“I was very impressed with Ad2Games’ data-driven technologies in the context of behavioral targeting and programmatic buying,” Kagan said in a statement. “I felt right at home with the team, and I am thrilled to join this fantastic group of international experts at a very exciting point of global growth and technological innovation.”
Kagan added, “Ad2Games offers an innovative and agile environment, focused on programmatic advertising. The games market, with its fast changes, is very exciting at the moment. But this disruption also comes with challenges for the advertisers. Ad2Games develops unique technology solutions that answer the need for personalized, targeted performance advertising. That puts them ahead of the other players in this market. Meeting the great team in Berlin was the final thing that I needed to decide to move there and take this opportunity.”