Smartly names three executives to leadership team

The New York-based company announced the appointments on October 1, 2025, bringing in executives with experience at major technology platforms including Etsy, TikTok, Netflix, Amazon, and Meta. The three leaders will oversee product development, partnership ecosystems, and customer success operations across the company's global organization.

Maxwell Tang joins as Chief Product Officer after spending more than ten years at Etsy, where he led product strategy for discovery and monetization functions. At Smartly, Tang will direct the company's global product vision with AI serving as the central focus. His responsibilities include building for customer needs in what the company describes as a "prompt-first era" while driving growth through data, intelligence, and platform experience improvements.

Melissa Yang assumes the role of SVP of Ecosystems & AI Applications following her position as Global Head of Marketing Partnerships & Industry Education at TikTok. According to the announcement, Yang spent the last decade building partnership ecosystems at Meta and TikTok, working across measurement, creative, commerce, and AI domains. At Smartly, she will lead the company's AI-first partner ecosystem, developing deeper integrations and alliances designed to help brands capture value from AI-driven innovation and deliver consumer experiences.

Julie Green becomes SVP of Global Customer Success after serving as Head of U.S. Vertical Advertising Sales at Netflix. Green's background includes leadership roles at Amazon and TikTok, where she focused on revenue generation and customer growth. Her responsibilities at Smartly center on leading the Global Customer Success organization, driving growth for customers, and helping them navigate AI-powered advertising across social, video, and connected television channels.

The appointments come as Smartly continues to position itself in the AI-powered advertising technology sector. The company holds a leadership position in The Forrester Wave: Creative Advertising Technologies rankings, an evaluation that influences enterprise software purchasing decisions in the marketing technology space.

Laura Desmond, CEO of Smartly, characterized the three executives as "world-class leaders and builders who bring proven expertise in shaping product innovation, partnerships, and customer success in the AI era." The statement emphasized that the appointments would strengthen the company's leadership team and support its position in creating solutions for global brands.

The company's platform unifies creative and media production to generate what it terms "intelligent creative"—dynamic, data-driven image and video assets optimized for activation across multiple channels. Brands use the system to manage, optimize, and scale campaigns from a single location. PwC has validated results from the platform, including a 5.5x return on ad spend and 42 minutes saved per hour in operational efficiency.

Smartly currently supports more than 700 brands and manages over $6 billion in advertising spend globally. The company maintains strategic partnerships with major media platforms including Amazon, Google, Meta, Pinterest, Reddit, Snap, and TikTok. These partnerships enable Fortune 500 companies to deliver advertising campaigns at scale across multiple channels.

The advertising technology sector has experienced significant changes as artificial intelligence capabilities have expanded. Platforms have integrated AI into campaign management and optimization processes, pushing the industry toward automation and machine learning applications. Major platforms have developed their own AI-powered advertising products, creating competitive pressure for independent advertising technology companies to demonstrate differentiated capabilities.

Tang's experience at Etsy involved driving product strategy across discovery and monetization, contributing to growth and innovation at the e-commerce marketplace. His decade-plus tenure there provided exposure to product development challenges in a rapidly scaling technology company focused on connecting buyers with unique goods from independent sellers.

Yang's work building partnership ecosystems at Meta and TikTok positioned her at the center of major platform expansion efforts over the past ten years. Her role involved creating programs that drove innovation across measurement, creative development, commerce integration, and AI implementation. The company noted her recognition as a builder of high-impact partner programs that expand market reach and unlock new business models.

Green's track record includes leading revenue and customer growth at platforms that have shaped digital advertising and streaming media. Her experience spans Amazon's advertising business, TikTok's commercial operations, and Netflix's advertising sales organization. The company highlighted her ability to build high-performing teams and help global brands succeed across evolving digital channels.

The leadership expansion occurs as Smartly manages substantial advertising spend across its client base. The $6 billion in managed spend represents significant scale in the advertising technology sector, where companies compete to process and optimize large volumes of campaign data and creative assets.

Connected television advertising has become a priority area for marketers, with platforms developing new capabilities to serve ads across streaming services and internet-connected devices. Research published by Smartly and EMARKETER in July 2025 revealed that 72% of marketers reuse or slightly modify creative assets across social media and connected TV platforms, while only 25% develop tailored creative for both channels. The findings highlight challenges in cross-channel storytelling as video consumption patterns reshape the advertising landscape.

The company's partnerships with major platforms provide access to advertising inventory and capabilities across different channels. Meta's advertising ecosystem reaches billions of users through Facebook and Instagram. TikTok has established itself as a major platform for short-form video advertising. Amazon combines e-commerce data with advertising delivery across its properties and third-party publishers. Google's advertising network spans search, display, video, and connected television inventory.

Smartly's emphasis on AI reflects broader technology industry trends toward machine learning and automation. The company's approach involves using AI to generate and optimize creative assets, manage campaign delivery, and measure performance across channels. The "prompt-first era" reference suggests an interface paradigm where users interact with systems through natural language instructions rather than manual configuration.

The New York headquarters positions Smartly in a major advertising industry hub, with proximity to agencies, brands, and media companies. The company employs approximately 700 people across its global operations, supporting clients in multiple regions and time zones.

Partnership ecosystem development has become a strategic priority for advertising technology companies. Platforms create partner programs to extend their capabilities, integrate with complementary services, and expand market reach. Yang's role focuses specifically on this ecosystem strategy, suggesting Smartly views partnerships as a key growth driver.

The company has demonstrated its ecosystem approach through recent platform integrations. In September 2025, Smartly announced its integration with Spotify Ads Manager, enabling advertisers to manage audio, display, and video campaigns directly through its AI-powered platform alongside other major digital channels. The partnership combined Spotify's engaged listener base with Smartly's automated creative production and cross-channel measurement capabilities.

Smartly also completed a comprehensive integration with Reddit in June 2025, making the integration generally available to all eligible advertisers. The integration addressed operational challenges that historically complicated multi-platform campaign management, including manual trafficking, creative rework, and siloed reporting. The system enables automated Reddit campaign management through Smartly's interface, including creative automation, dynamic product ads, predictive budget allocation, and unified reporting.

Customer success operations have gained importance in software companies as they shift from initial sales to ongoing customer retention and expansion. Green's appointment to lead global customer success indicates Smartly's focus on helping existing clients maximize platform value and expand their usage over time.

The competitive landscape for advertising technology platforms has intensified as AI capabilities become central to product differentiation. McKinsey's Technology Trends Outlook 2025 report identified agentic AI—artificial intelligence systems capable of autonomous planning and execution—as the most significant emerging trend for marketing organizations. The analysis showed the marketing industry moving toward autonomous systems and human-AI collaboration models that promise to transform campaign management and customer targeting.

Industry investment patterns reflect growing emphasis on AI-powered advertising capabilities. Advertising technology companies have prioritized development of AI assistants and automated optimization tools to improve advertiser outcomes. These systems provide real-time insights, personalized assistance, and natural language query capabilities to help agencies and brands make faster decisions across campaign lifecycles.

The appointments position Smartly to address evolving advertiser needs as the industry navigates technological transformation. Tang will guide product development priorities, Yang will shape partnership strategy and ecosystem expansion, and Green will oversee customer relationship management and growth initiatives. Together, the three executives bring complementary skill sets spanning product innovation, platform partnerships, and commercial operations.

The company's existing leadership team includes CEO Laura Desmond, who joined Smartly after serving as CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group and Global CEO of VivaKi. Desmond's background in advertising holding company leadership provides strategic perspective on client needs and industry dynamics. The addition of Tang, Yang, and Green expands the executive team's capabilities across technical product development, platform ecosystem strategy, and customer success operations.

Smartly's business model centers on providing unified workflow capabilities that consolidate creative production, media buying, and campaign optimization. The platform generates creative assets at scale using AI-powered templates and automated editing systems. According to the company, clients can produce over 150 million creative variants monthly through these automated tools.

The company's partnerships with major advertising platforms enable advertisers to manage campaigns across multiple channels without platform-switching requirements. Users can plan, build, and launch campaigns across social media, search, display, video, and connected television inventory through a single interface. This unified approach addresses fragmentation challenges that historically required separate tools and workflows for each advertising channel.

Technical capabilities include dynamic product ads that leverage existing product feeds, automated budget allocation using algorithmic optimization, and cross-platform reporting dashboards that consolidate performance data. The system incorporates platform-specific features while maintaining consistent user experience and reporting frameworks across channels.

Industry trends indicate continued growth in programmatic advertising and AI-powered campaign management. Major platforms have expanded their AI advertising capabilities, introducing enhanced branding tools, upgraded video generation capabilities, and new engagement features designed to improve campaign performance. These platform developments create both opportunities and challenges for independent advertising technology companies.

The leadership appointments reflect Smartly's strategic priorities as the company navigates competitive dynamics in the advertising technology sector. Product innovation under Tang's leadership will determine the platform's technical differentiation. Partnership development under Yang's direction will shape ecosystem expansion and platform integration capabilities. Customer success initiatives under Green's oversight will influence client retention and revenue growth.

Timeline

• October 1, 2025: Smartly announces three senior executive appointments to leadership team
• September 3, 2025: Smartly integrates with Spotify Ads Manager for cross-channel campaigns
• July 9, 2025: Smartly and EMARKETER release research showing 72% of marketers reuse creative assets across platforms
• June 30, 2025: Reddit launches full Smartly integration for automated campaign management
• June 17, 2025: Meta announces generative AI advances for advertisers at Cannes Lions
• 2024-2025: Advertising platforms accelerate AI integration across campaign management

Summary

Who: Smartly, an AI-powered advertising technology company, appointed Maxwell Tang as Chief Product Officer, Melissa Yang as SVP of Ecosystems & AI Applications, and Julie Green as SVP of Global Customer Success. CEO Laura Desmond announced the leadership additions.

What: The three executives bring experience from Etsy, TikTok, Netflix, Amazon, and Meta to lead product development, partnership ecosystems, and customer success at a company managing over $6 billion in global advertising spend for more than 700 brands. They will focus on AI-powered advertising capabilities, platform integrations, and customer growth initiatives.

When: The appointments were announced on October 1, 2025, taking effect as the company expands its AI-focused capabilities and platform integrations across social, video, and connected television channels.

Where: The changes affect Smartly's global operations from its New York headquarters, with implications for the company's 700 employees and clients across multiple regions who use partnerships with major advertising platforms including Amazon, Google, Meta, Pinterest, Reddit, Snap, and TikTok.

Why: The appointments aim to accelerate AI innovation, strengthen partnership ecosystems, and drive customer growth as the advertising technology sector increasingly adopts machine learning and automation across creative production, campaign management, and performance optimization. The leadership expansion addresses evolving advertiser needs as platforms integrate AI capabilities and competition intensifies in the advertising technology sector.