Teads today named Alex Underwood Managing Director of North America and Alena Morris Senior Vice President, Client Solutions & Strategic Products, adding two senior sales-side executives in New York six weeks after the Nasdaq-listed advertising platform withdrew its full-year 2026 profit forecast.

In Short

Teads, a company that sells ads across websites, apps and smart TVs, hired two experienced executives today: one to run its North American business and one to turn its products into things salespeople can sell worldwide. The hires matter because Teads has been losing revenue and pulled its 2026 profit forecast in August, so the people selling to big agencies and brands are under pressure to reverse that. Nothing changes for advertisers overnight, but the agencies and brands that buy from Teads in North America now have a new senior person to deal with.

Two appointments, one reporting line

Both executives will work from the company's New York office and report to Chief Commercial Officer Mollie Spilman, according to Teads. The company, which trades on Nasdaq under the ticker TEAD and describes itself as an omnichannel outcomes platform, issued the announcement from New York on September 15, 2026.

Underwood takes responsibility for the business across North America. According to Teads, he will oversee strategy and operations in the region, with a focus on accelerating growth and deepening relationships with agencies and enterprise brands. Morris holds a global remit. She will drive go-to-market strategies and translate the company's product work into commercial solutions intended to produce client value and revenue growth, according to Teads.

The release does not give start dates, and it does not say whether Underwood succeeds a named predecessor. That second point is not trivial. When Outbrain completed its acquisition of Legacy Teads, Jeremy Arditi and Bertrand Quesada, the former Teads co-chief executives, became Co-Presidents and Chief Business Officers for the Americas and International markets respectively. By August 2025 the company was describing a U.S. leadership restructuring alongside a consolidation of its European business. How the new North America role sits against that earlier structure was not addressed in the announcement.

Where Underwood comes from

The North America appointment draws on agency-facing roles at three large platforms. According to Teads, Underwood was most recently Global Head of Agency Development at Reddit, where he led relationships with agencies. Before that he was Vice President of Global Strategic Partnerships at Spotify. There, according to the company, he set up Spotify's first Global Agency Development team and scaled it into a wider Advertising Partnerships organisation covering global brand partnerships, trading and audience solutions.

He also spent seven years at Google, working in London and New York. According to Teads, he developed the North American agency go-to-market strategy there and created Google's Global Media Agency Council.

The common thread is agency relationships, and the timing of that hire is not incidental. On the company's second-quarter earnings call, Chief Executive David Kostman said more than 90% of enterprise-side billings are billed to the large agency groups. An executive whose last three employers placed him in charge of agency development is being put in front of exactly the buyers that control most of Teads' enterprise revenue.

"This is an exciting time to be joining the Teads team and leading growth across North America," Underwood said. "Teads works with so many incredible partners already, and I'm eager to deepen these relationships while building new ones in the region."

Where Morris comes from

Morris arrives with a background in product marketing, go-to-market strategy and commercialisation. According to Teads, she has held leadership roles at Kargo, PubMatic, Quantcast and CBS Interactive, where she worked on responses to shifts across programmatic advertising, connected TV, commerce media and artificial intelligence. The release lists those four employers without dates or titles.

Her new job has several defined parts. According to Teads, Morris will lead go-to-market for the Client Solutions & Strategic Products organisation. That covers the development of go-to-market sales strategies, narratives and enablement. She will also oversee pre-sale and post-sale solutions, and help bring client and market feedback closer to the product organisation.

Put plainly, the role sits between the engineers who build Teads' products and the sellers who have to explain them. That gap has widened as the product list has grown. Over the past eighteen months the company has pushed into CTV home screen inventory, publisher operating systems and attention measurement, each of which requires its own sales narrative.

"With media evolving at a rapid pace, the need for innovative media and advertising technology solutions has never been greater," Morris said. "Joining Teads allows our team to not only drive exceptional results for clients, but also show the market how we solve many of today's most complex challenges."

What Spilman said

Spilman framed both appointments around converting technology into revenue. "Alex and Alena bring an incredible depth of experience across the advertising and technology world, and I'm thrilled to have them both on board," she said. "They truly understand what it is that brands and agencies need from their partners, but also what it takes to turn great technology into real value for clients and translate our product innovation into revenue. As we continue working towards accelerated growth, their leadership and expertise will be vital."

Spilman herself is a relatively recent arrival. Teads disclosed her appointment during its third-quarter 2025 earnings call on November 6, 2025, placing her at the head of a restructured go-to-market organisation. Two months later the company recruited Dani Cushion from Innovid as its new chief marketing officer, effective January 6, 2026. Today's hires extend that rebuilding of the commercial layer further down the organisation chart.

The financial backdrop

Leadership changes at a listed company rarely arrive in a vacuum, and these follow a difficult summer. On August 6, 2026, Teads reported second-quarter revenue of $284.6 million, a 17% decline, and suspended its full-year guidance, including an adjusted EBITDA target of approximately $100 million. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter came in at $7.0 million against $27.0 million a year earlier, below a guided range of $14 million to $22 million. The net loss widened to $42.5 million.

The same results split Ex-TAC gross profit by customer type for the first time. Enterprise brand and agency customers contributed $89 million. Direct response and small business customers contributed $34 million, down 30% year over year. Kostman called the enterprise business the company's primary growth engine, and said enterprise advertiser spend was flat in the quarter, with May and June both showing year-over-year growth.

That split explains the shape of today's appointments. Neither executive is described as working on the direct response business that is shrinking fastest. Both are pointed at agencies and enterprise brands, the segment Teads has told investors it will build around.

Geography matters as well. During the third quarter of 2025, the company said the United States, the United Kingdom and France together represented about 50% of revenue and were driving all of the headwind on the legacy Teads business. North America is therefore not a peripheral market being handed to a new manager. It is part of the problem the company has been trying to fix for more than a year.

The balance sheet adds urgency. At June 30, 2026, Teads held $91.0 million in cash and short-term securities against total debt of $614.5 million, most of it in 10.000% senior secured notes due 2030. Quarterly interest expense of $17.4 million exceeded the $15.6 million operating loss.

A risk factor written for this announcement

One detail in the release deserves attention. Its forward-looking statements section, usually boilerplate, contains a risk tailored to the news itself: that the newly appointed commercial leadership may not successfully execute go-to-market strategies or accelerate revenue growth in North America or globally as anticipated. Teads also lists the highly competitive nature of the digital, CTV and streaming advertising markets, and refers readers to its Form 10-K for 2025 and its Form 10-Q filings for the quarters ended March 31 and June 30, 2026.

Such language is legal protection rather than a forecast. Still, it is unusual for a hiring announcement to name the hires themselves as a disclosed risk, and it signals how closely investors are expected to connect these appointments to the revenue line.

Product pipeline the new team inherits

The two executives join as Teads is selling a noticeably wider catalogue than it did a year ago. In February 2026 it added Google TV Masthead placements, taking its HomeScreen reach past 500 million devices. In June it put EngageOS, a publisher feed operating system with Magnite as programmatic demand partner, into testing, and grouped its television formats into Teads CTV Ensemble.

August brought a multi-year deal with V, the operating system formerly called VIDAA, giving Teads exclusive global rights to a 10-day home screen takeover across the Black Friday and Cyber Monday window, running through 2028. This month the company extended its Whale TV relationship into a global partnership reaching more than 100 countries.

Connected television is where the growth sits. CTV revenue rose 67% year over year in the second quarter and reached 13% of total revenue, up from 7% a year earlier. Translating that inventory into agency buying plans, and into the narratives Morris is now responsible for, is a large part of what the new commercial structure has to deliver.

The company's scale remains substantial. According to Teads, it works directly with more than 10,000 publishers and 20,000 advertisers, and employs around 1,700 people in more than 30 countries.

Litigation and a crowded field

Teads also carries legal exposure that touches its commercial relationships. On August 3, 2026, it filed an antitrust complaint against Google LLC and Alphabet Inc. in the Southern District of New York, alleging rival exchanges were denied 6.88 trillion impressions between 2017 and 2023. In a filing the same day it named retaliation by Google as a business risk. Underwood spent seven years at the company Teads is now suing. The litigation is not mentioned in today's release, and its forward-looking statements do not repeat the Google risk that appeared in the second-quarter results.

Senior turnover is not unique to Teads. The Trade Desk has replaced most of its senior team within roughly a year, naming a new chief financial officer, chief marketing officer, chief commercial officer and chief business development officer, and has since cut about 575 jobs. Criteo cut its full-year guidance on August 5, 2026 after second-quarter revenue fell 11%. Across listed open web companies, commercial reorganisations are being paired with weaker forecasts.

Why this matters for buyers and sellers

For agencies in North America, the practical change is a new senior counterpart at a supplier whose enterprise billings run overwhelmingly through holding company groups. Underwood's record at Reddit, Spotify and Google is in agency development, and that is where the role's early activity is likely to concentrate.

For publishers, the Morris appointment is more relevant than it first appears. Her remit includes bringing client and market feedback closer to the product organisation, and Teads' publisher-facing products, from EngageOS to its native and in-feed formats, depend on advertiser demand that the commercial team has to generate.

For investors, the question is simpler. Teads has now rebuilt its commercial leadership from the chief commercial officer downward within about ten months. Will that translate into the mid-single-digit enterprise Ex-TAC growth management said it expected in the second half of 2026? The company has not provided a timeline, and its own risk disclosure acknowledges it may not.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Teads Holding Co. (Nasdaq: TEAD) appointed Alex Underwood, previously Global Head of Agency Development at Reddit and earlier at Spotify and Google, and Alena Morris, who has held leadership roles at Kargo, PubMatic, Quantcast and CBS Interactive. Both report to Chief Commercial Officer Mollie Spilman.

What: Underwood becomes Managing Director of North America, overseeing regional strategy and operations with a focus on agencies and enterprise brands. Morris becomes Senior Vice President, Client Solutions & Strategic Products, leading global go-to-market strategy, sales narratives and enablement, and pre-sale and post-sale solutions.

When: The appointments were made public today, September 15, 2026, six weeks after Teads suspended its full-year 2026 guidance on August 6. No start dates were given.

Where: Both executives are based in Teads' New York headquarters. Underwood's remit covers North America; Morris's is global.

Why: Teads is rebuilding its commercial organisation around enterprise brands and agencies, which contributed $89 million of its $123 million second-quarter Ex-TAC gross profit, while its direct response business shrinks; the United States was among the markets the company said were driving the legacy Teads decline in 2025. The company's own risk disclosure states that the new leaders may not deliver the growth it is seeking.