Dana Toering
Dana Toering, AOL Canada’s head of partner revenue and development, has left the company to join Addictive Mobility as its first chief revenue officer. Starting Tuesday, Toering will lead sales and marketing operations for Addictive’s mobile in-app ad technology solutions.
Toering has been at AOL for the past five years, and was among the first 30 employees hired in the Canadian market. For nearly two decades, he’s held senior sales roles at media companies like Postmedia, Yahoo, Google, Adconion (now Amobee) and 24/7 Real Media (now Xaxis).
He told Marketing he wants to return to a smaller, growth-focused company and help build it up to be a national player. He said that Addictive is an especially attractive opportunity because it’s so well-positioned for the mass migration of digital ad budgets into mobile that eMarketer says is already underway.
“Addictive is the best kept secret in Canadian ad tech,” he said. “In a very efficient way, they’ve built a phenomenal tech stack over the past five years very much under the radar. I look at this as an opportunity to grow on that success in Canada and export it internationally.”
As CRO, Toering’s main focus will be on revenue growth and business development, but a big part of that will be building up Addictive’s brand on the international ad tech scene. One of his first duties will be to hire a senior marketing lead to help the company get more profile in Canada and other markets where it operates, including the U.S., U.K., the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
Getting a bigger foothold in the tech-hungry U.S. market will be a top priority, he said. But the company also plans on swift expansion in emerging markets, where it’s already seen a lot of success. Addictive has had an office in Dubai since 2013, and has become a key mobile tech player in the underserved Middle East market, naming Nestle and Jaguar as clients.
Addictive CEO Naveed Ahmad said the company brought Toering on board after a three-month executive search, having decided that CRO was a necessary role to help commercialize its growing list of in-app advertising technology solutions. So far this year, Addictive has launched a self-serve programmatic buying platform, a retargeting solution for in-app advertising, and a mobile data management platform that lets advertisers use their first-party CRM data to target their customers within mobile apps.
Toering said he’ll help Addictive design tech solutions that meet the needs of advertisers. He’ll also facilitate partnerships with other technology providers, particularly in marketing tech, to give advertisers more ways to access Addictive’s platform and improve its cross-compatibility with other vendors clients use.
“We’ve built great products, now we need to have a great voice,” Ahmad said. “Dana is the gentleman who’s going to bring that great voice.”
