Kenshoo nabs former Facebook marketer as new Aussie chief

Social marketing technology player, Kenshoo, has headhunted one of Facebook’s regional marketing leaders as its new Australia and New Zealand chief.

Ruud Spierings has spent the last four years in Facebook’s Sydney office, most recently as Asia-Pacific client partner, global marketing solutions, and was its sixth employee in Australia. During this time, he focused on education local advertisers on how to use the platform and optimise spend.

Prior to joining Facebook in 2010, Spierings was a senior business development manager at MediaSmart, the media sales arm of Sensis, for four years. In a statement, he said his mandate as director of social at Kenshoo A/NZ is to help brands utilise digital budgets effectively as they ramp up investment into social channels.

“It’s not often you get the chance to join a company that is hailed by independent sources as having the best software platform in search and social,” Spierings said, referring to Forrester Research’s recent nomination of Kenshoo as the sole leader in social advertising platform technology.

“We see tremendous opportunities for brands seeking to leverage the power of search data and leveraging that information to drive their social advertising campaigns,” Spierings added. “The amount of value a technology partner can bring to the table in terms of optimisation and process automation is unbelievable.”

Kenshoo and Facebook already work closely together in Australia, via the Facebook FBX ad platform. Spierings said he has seen the social advertising market evolve rapidly in the past five years, and that brands are now eager to learn more about connecting with their customers than ever before.

“The future of social advertising is using all the data that a brand has at its disposal, and continuously enhancing social campaigns through advanced technology,” he said. “We also believe that software players need to be tightly integrated with the dominant social platforms and educate brands as to how they can reach their online audiences effectively. Combining the technology needed to optimise both search and social with one player is a key advantage.”

According to Kenshoo, marketers continue to undervalue Facebook as a marketing channel. In a report released by the company last August, it claimed marketers who relied on last-click attribution models to understand their multi-channel marketing approach and measure success were devaluing the social network’s impact and making flawed marketing decisions.

Using a cost-per-acquisition metric across all advertisers, the research found Facebook was undervalued by 30 per cent in a last-click versus first-only approach, and 20 per cent when contrasted with a prefer-first approach.

Facebook’s most recent Q3 financial results also showed growth across mobile engagement, number of marketers and product development, with total advertising revenue of US$1.8bn, up 66 per cent year-on-year.

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