Google Veteran Abhyankar Joins  Tech Startup Ad-Lib As CEO

Last week we wrote about Ad-Lib when the U.K.-based Marketing technology SaaS platform Ad-Lib raised $6 million Series A to disrupt digital ad creative production with AI-driven platform. Today, Ad-Lib announced the expansion of its senior leadership team, with the appointment of Adit Abhyankar as CEO and Patrick Collister to the role of Creative Director.

Abhyankar and Collister have joined Ad-Lib from Google to bring together data and creative for brands. Previously Abhyankar was Head of Google Marketing Platform, Continental Europe and Emerging Markets, and Collister held the role of Head of Design at Google Zoo.

Abhyankar brings more than 20 years digital advertising experience in the US and EMEA to the role. Prior to Google he was Executive Director at Visual IQ, an attribution technology company acquired by Nielsen, and Chief Operating Officer at SolutionSet, a brand technology agency, now part of Publicis. As CEO at Ad-Lib, he will oversee the next stage of growth and investment in Ad-Lib’s platform, the team and client relationships.

Collister is a creative industry veteran with over thirty years experience in high profile roles including Executive Creative Director and Vice Chairman Ogilvy London, Chief Creative Officer, EHS Brann Group. Joining Ad-Lib as Non-Executive Director last year, in his new role as Creative Director Collister will provide insight and input into the ongoing design of the platform and manage the Ad-Lib design hub.

Ad-Lib’s AI-driven platform is powering the ability for global brands such as Nestle to realise personalisation at scale, revolutionising the digital ad creative process by streamlining creative ad production workflows, automating digital asset creation and optimising creative performance across display, video, social, native and mobile.

Abhyankar said of joining Ad-Lib: “Personalising creative the way we personalise media targeting is a huge untapped opportunity, even though it has been proven to drive tremendous value. The reason it is so underutilised is an organisational one – it is simply too clunky and costly to produce high quality, personalised creative across all the profusion of digital formats manually. Ad-Lib’s AI-driven platform is disrupting the current status quo by making this process faster, cheaper and smarter. I’m thrilled to be joining the stellar team at this pivotal time to further accelerate its impressive growth.”

Abhyankar and Collister join a management team of creative and martech industry experts from Google, Essence and Criteo, headed up by Founder and President Oli Marlow-Thomas, formerly Creative Lead, Google.

Founded in 2017 by Oli-Marlow Thomas, formerly creative lead at Google, Ad-Lib Digital is a digital creative tech and service business. Ad-Lib management team is made up of creative and mar-tech industry heavyweights from Google, Essence and Criteo. The company employs 80 staff in offices in London, Madrid, Dubai, Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney and Manila.