Unruly co-founders step down, CEO hunt still underway

Co-founders of Unruly, Sarah Wood, Scott Button and Matt Cooke will be moving out from their full-time executive positions at Unruly and stepping into new advisory roles on the Unruly Board.After 12 years with the company, Wood, CEO of the company said Button (CSO) and Cooke (CTO) will be taking up advisory roles on the Unruly Board. As part of the transition, Steve Hayes will be taking on the CTO role, Ken Suh will be stepping into the role of COO and Louise Tullin will now be CMO of the company. Button and Cooke will be focused on handover until the end of 2017, and will be taking up board responsibilities with immediate effect to provide strategic guidance for the company going forward.Meanwhile, Wood will continue on in the role until March 2018 as the organisation continues to search for a “programmatic superstar” to take up the role of Unruly CEO. From April 2018,Wood will take up the role of chair of the Unruly Board.“As you can imagine, after 12 exhilarating years of building a global business and challenging the norms of adtech at every step, we are looking forward to handing the baton to our highly experienced and talented exec team, whose ambitious vision for Unruly 2020 will ensure that we continue to deliver wow for advertisers and take the lead on transforming advertising for the better,” Wood said.She added: “One of the secrets to Unruly’s success is our willingness to embrace and inspire change, and now more than ever there is so much to look forward to in the business, so many new opportunities to seize and so many more successes still to come! Over the last 2 years, we’ve generated exponential growth in programmatic video revenues and we’ve built a first-class global leadership team to take the company forward.”Unruly was first acquired by News Corp two years ago. At that point, Unruly and regional hubs in London, New York and Singapore. For Unruly, the deal led to investment in UnrulyX and boosted programmatic revenues.Founded in 2006, Unruly is a video distribution platform and a leading player in tracking video sharing and delivering verifiable video views via paid media across mobile, desktop and tablet devices.“We have a phenomenal premium media footprint, highly viewable formats and a unique first-party data offering that is truly Unruly, bringing emotional intelligence to programmatic video advertising. We also have the premium media platform and passionate support of News Corp globally. When you combine all these ingredients with the strength of our values and the fierce determination of Unrulies around the world, you have a company with unlimited potential for innovation and impact, where new trails will be blazed and the best is yet to come,” Wood added.