Outbrain Announces Senior Leadership Appointments

NEW YORK, May 04, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Outbrain Inc. (NASDAQ: OB), a leading recommendation platform for the open web, today announced key promotions to scale global operations, drive innovation, and expand Outbrain’s offerings for brands, advertisers, and publishers. These appointments follow Alexander Erlmeier’s promotion to Chief Revenue Officer in October 2022.

“Evolving customer habits and emerging technologies continue to necessitate agility and resiliency among technology and advertising organizations,” said Erlmeier. “With an expanded and unified leadership team, Outbrain is well positioned to scale alongside the evolving industry. Together with our teams across the globe, our newly appointed senior leadership team will work to build deeper audience engagement to maximize brand impact for our advertisers and to help publishers diversify revenue streams.”

The leadership appointments include:

• Ayal Steiner - Executive Vice President, Brand Solutions - overseeing development of innovative solutions for brands and agencies looking to drive measurable outcomes and deeper engagement with audiences.
• Stephanie Himoff - Executive Vice President, Global Publishers - leading our strategic publisher initiatives on a global scale.
• Sarah Baird - Senior Vice President, Revenue Operations - leading revenue operations and enablement functions to provide strategies designed to support clients at scale.
• Craig Hughes - Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Strategy; General Manager, Video - driving Outbrain's video strategy and business globally, and managing strategic initiatives and partnerships to deepen Outbrain's industry presence.
• Klaus Ludemann - Senior Vice President, Programmatic and Partnerships - managing programmatic partnerships and adoption in service of advertisers and publishers.
• Guy Yagur - Senior Vice President, Global Performance and Growth Revenue - leading a newly centralized global hub focused on supporting and scaling performance-based and DIY customers.

“We are moving with full force and are taking important steps to align our business model to best fit the evolving needs of brands, advertisers, and publishers while seizing new opportunities for revenue and product growth,” said David Kostman Co-CEO, Outbrain. “These appointments are an essential part of our plan to scale our business effectively and efficiently and enable Outbrain to integrate emerging technologies aimed at advancing the industry and driving value for our customers.”

In addition, Outbrain announced the appointment of Amrita de la Peña, former General Manager, APAC at Sprout Social and Head of Global Brands for JAPAC at Twitter, to serve as Managing Director, APAC.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, which statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements generally relate to possible or assumed future results of our business, financial condition, results of operations, liquidity, plans and objectives. You can generally identify forward-looking statements because they contain words such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “expects,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “could,” “intends,” “guidance,” “outlook,” “target,” “projects,” “contemplates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “predicts,” "foresee,” “potential” or “continue” or the negative of these terms or other similar expressions that concern our expectations, strategy, plans or intentions. We have based these forward-looking statements largely on our current expectations and projections regarding future events and trends that we believe may affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. The outcome of the events described in these forward-looking statements is subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, including but not limited to: risks and uncertainties associated with the SVB closure; overall advertising demand and traffic generated by our media partners; factors that affect advertising demand and spending, such as the continuation or worsening of unfavorable economic or business conditions or downturns, instability or volatility in financial markets, and other events or factors outside of our control, such as U.S. and global recession concerns, geopolitical concerns, including the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, supply chain issues, inflationary pressures, labor market volatility, and the pace of recovery or any resurgences of the COVID-19 pandemic; our ability to continue to innovate, and adoption by our advertisers and media partners of our expanding solutions; the success of our sales and marketing investments, which may require significant investments and may involve long sales cycles; our ability to grow our business and manage growth effectively; our ability to compete effectively against current and future competitors; the loss of one or more of our large media partners, and our ability to expand our advertiser and media partner relationships; our ability to maintain our revenues or profitability despite quarterly fluctuations in our results, whether due to seasonality, large cyclical events, or other causes; the risk that our research and development efforts may not meet the demands of a rapidly evolving technology market; any failure of our recommendation engine to accurately predict user engagement, any deterioration in the quality of our recommendations or failure to present interesting content to users or other factors which may cause us to experience a decline in user engagement or loss of media partners; limits on our ability to collect, use and disclose data to deliver advertisements; our ability to extend our reach into evolving digital media platforms; our ability to maintain and scale our technology platform; our ability to meet demands on our infrastructure and resources due to future growth or otherwise; significant fluctuations in currency exchange rates; failures or loss of the hardware, software and infrastructure on which we rely, or security breaches; political and regulatory risks in the various markets in which we operate; the challenges of compliance with differing and changing regulatory requirements; the risks described in the section entitled “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in the Annual Report on Form 10-K filed for the year ended December 31, 2022 and in subsequent reports filed with the SEC. Accordingly, you should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. We cannot assure you that the results, events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements will be achieved or occur, and actual results, events or circumstances could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement to reflect events or circumstances after the date on which the statement is made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

About Outbrain 
Outbrain (Nasdaq: OB) is a leading recommendation platform for the open web. Our technology enables 10 billion daily recommendations to consumers across more than 7,000 online properties and connects advertisers to these audiences to grow their business. Founded in 2006, Outbrain is headquartered in New York with offices in 17 cities worldwide. 

Media Contact 
press@outbrain.com