Explore recruitment and executive search projects delivered by Ultimate Asset across Adtech, Martech, SaaS and Emerging Media.
From senior market-entry appointments to international leadership builds and rapid commercial team hiring, these case studies show how we approach searches across the UK & Europe, North America and Asia.
No two hiring challenges are exactly the same.
Some clients need one senior leader capable of opening a new market. Others need an entire commercial team built within months. Some searches are retained and confidential. Others require rapid contingent hiring across several roles.
This library brings together real examples of how those searches were structured, where the challenges sat and what was ultimately delivered.
Ultimate Asset became embedded with Hivestack's senior leadership team during a period of rapid international expansion, delivering VP Sales, Managing Director and Country Manager appointments across multiple global markets.
An exclusive hiring project to build a new Agency Sales function during Criteo's shift towards commerce and retail media, delivered in three months.
Retained search for a foundational Country Manager appointment, mapping senior leaders across the Japanese advertising technology ecosystem.
Retained, research-led search for senior, confidential and market-critical appointments, from Country Managers and Managing Directors to VP and C-suite hires and international market entry.
Explore Executive Search →Success-based recruitment for specialist commercial and GTM hiring, spanning commercial team builds, sales, marketing, customer success and specialist growth roles.
Explore Contingent Search →Dedicated recruitment support for new team builds, international expansion and multiple related hires running under one coordinated programme.
Talk to us about a project →Commercial, programmatic, client services, marketing and leadership recruitment across the wider advertising technology ecosystem.
Explore Adtech recruitment →Sales, marketing, partnerships, customer success and leadership for marketing technology businesses.
Explore Martech recruitment →Commercial and GTM recruitment for B2B software businesses, from growth-stage teams to international platforms.
Explore SaaS recruitment →Commercial and leadership talent across creator, influencer, social, gaming, retail media and new media platforms.
Explore Emerging Media recruitment →23 senior placements. 15 markets. Seven months. One embedded international search partnership.
Hivestack was building a global programmatic digital out-of-home business at pace.
The technology had international potential, but turning that opportunity into a global company meant establishing credible leadership and commercial teams in market after market.
That expansion accelerated significantly through 2020 and 2021.
Ultimate Asset was selected following a global pitch to support that growth.
Many of the searches were taking place before Hivestack had an established local team, employer brand or significant presence in the market.
That meant the hiring challenge went well beyond matching somebody to a job description.
The business needed senior people capable of opening markets, creating relationships, building revenue and representing Hivestack locally.
Roles ranged from VP Sales level through to Managing Directors and Country Managers. And they were being hired across very different talent markets.
The scale and speed of the project required a different way of working.
Ultimate Asset's founders became embedded operationally with Hivestack's leadership team, working closely with the CEO, CRO, COO and CPO.
Rather than briefing individual roles and returning with CVs, we operated much more like an extension of the business. That included helping shape briefs, sense-check compensation, provide competitor intelligence, map the relevant market and advise on where the strongest talent was likely to come from.
Commercially, the partnership was structured around a monthly retainer alongside a reduced success fee. That gave Hivestack dedicated international search capacity while allowing both teams to work across multiple markets at once.
The hiring programme covered:
Each market required a different search strategy. Compensation varied. Candidate expectations varied. Competitor sets changed. The maturity of the local programmatic and DOOH ecosystem differed considerably.
The common requirement was senior commercial talent capable of building. So the search could not simply be replicated from one country to the next.
Much of the project happened during COVID. International travel was heavily restricted, face-to-face interviewing was limited and many candidates were understandably cautious about moving businesses during an uncertain period.
At the same time, Hivestack was continuing to expand.
The search therefore relied heavily on direct market mapping, passive candidate engagement and constant communication between Ultimate Asset and Hivestack's senior leadership team.
We provided feedback from each market as the searches developed, including candidate availability, compensation expectations, competitor activity and where the original brief needed adjusting. That allowed hiring decisions to keep moving despite the wider environment.
Across the project, Ultimate Asset delivered 23 senior placements across 15 international markets in seven months.
The appointments were predominantly VP Sales level and above and included Managing Directors and Country Managers responsible for establishing and scaling Hivestack's presence locally.
It was not simply a volume hiring project. Each appointment had the potential to shape the performance of an entire market.
The initial global expansion project developed into a broader relationship. Ultimate Asset continued supporting Hivestack with contingent hiring across EMEA and APAC after the core programme had been delivered.
That continuation mattered because by then we understood the business, its proposition, the leadership team and the type of people who succeeded inside the company. The search partnership had moved from individual vacancies to genuine market context.
Hivestack continued its international expansion and its platform was ultimately deployed across more than 30 countries.
In December 2023, Hivestack was acquired by Perion Network.
The acquisition came several years after the search programme, so it would be wrong to attribute that outcome to recruitment alone. But the international leadership structure built during Hivestack's expansion formed part of the business that went on to scale globally.
International expansion is often described in terms of countries, offices and revenue targets. In reality, much of it comes down to people.
A company can identify an attractive market, build a commercial plan and invest in technology, but without the right person leading locally, expansion can remain theoretical.
The strongest international searches therefore require more than access to candidates. They require an understanding of how the talent market changes from country to country, which backgrounds genuinely transfer and what it takes to persuade established senior people to join a business that may still be relatively unknown locally.
For businesses expanding internationally, that can be the difference between opening a market on paper and actually building a business there.
Ultimate Asset helps Adtech and technology businesses identify senior commercial and leadership talent across the UK & Europe, North America and Asia. From first market-entry hires to multi-country leadership builds, we support businesses that need to understand the market as well as recruit from it.
12 specialist sales hires. Two European hubs. Three months. One completely new proposition to take to market.
Criteo was going through an important evolution.
The business had long been known for performance advertising and retargeting, but the wider market was changing quickly. Retailers were beginning to recognise the value of their first-party data and digital inventory, while brands were looking for new ways to reach customers closer to the point of purchase.
Commerce and retail media were becoming a much bigger part of the conversation. For Criteo, that created an opportunity to take a broader proposition to agencies and advertisers. It also created a recruitment challenge.
Criteo needed to build an Agency Sales team capable of taking that evolving proposition to market. The requirement was not simply for experienced Adtech sellers.
The people joining needed to understand agencies, communicate a relatively new commercial proposition and build credibility with clients who were themselves still working out how retail and commerce media fitted into their plans.
The team needed to be built across London and Barcelona, and quickly. Criteo was not hiring one person and waiting to see how they performed. It needed an entire group of commercial people entering the business within the same period.
Ultimate Asset was appointed on an exclusive basis to run the search. The project involved 12 Agency Sales hires across two European hubs, with multiple searches running concurrently.
That meant the relationship needed to work differently from a standard vacancy-by-vacancy recruitment process. We owned the search activity end to end and maintained regular communication with Criteo's Talent team and senior commercial leadership, including weekly discussions around pipeline, feedback and what we were seeing in the market.
The objective was simple: build the team without allowing quality to fall as the volume increased.
Before approaching candidates, we needed to understand what they would actually be joining to sell. That mattered because the opportunity could not be positioned as simply another Agency Sales role within Adtech.
Criteo's proposition was changing. Candidates needed to understand the move towards commerce and retail media, why that market was developing and what the opportunity could mean for their own careers. That understanding shaped both the search strategy and the way we approached the market.
London and Barcelona had different talent pools, compensation expectations and levels of relevant experience. Rather than treating them as identical searches, we mapped each market independently while maintaining one overall project structure.
That allowed us to identify where direct experience existed, where adjacent backgrounds could transfer and where the brief needed to remain flexible.
Multiple candidates were moving through interview processes at the same time, so coordination became as important as sourcing. Feedback needed to move quickly. Candidate expectations needed to be managed. And Criteo needed a clear view of the overall hiring pipeline rather than 12 separate recruitment processes.
Because commerce media was still developing as a category, requiring every candidate to already have direct retail media experience would have unnecessarily restricted the market.
The search therefore focused on transferable commercial capability. Relevant candidates could come from Adtech, programmatic, agency sales or adjacent digital advertising environments if they understood agency relationships and could sell a developing proposition. That widened the talent pool while keeping the underlying commercial standard high.
Multi-hire projects can easily become a numbers exercise. This one could not. Criteo needed 12 people, but each person still had to be capable of representing a changing proposition credibly in front of agencies.
Running the project exclusively gave us the ability to coordinate the market properly rather than sending candidates into a fragmented process. Weekly communication with the client meant issues were addressed quickly, interview feedback stayed current and the search could adjust as the team began to take shape.
Ultimate Asset delivered 12 Agency Sales appointments across London and Barcelona within three months. The project gave Criteo the commercial capacity it needed during an important stage in the evolution of its proposition.
For Ultimate Asset, the significance of the project was not simply the number of hires. It was the combination of speed, multiple concurrent searches and the need to recruit people into a proposition that was still relatively new to much of the market.
This was a search shaped by where the industry was heading. Retail and commerce media were becoming more important, but the mature candidate pool that exists around the category today had not yet fully formed.
That meant recruitment could not rely on searching for people who had already done exactly the same job somewhere else. Instead, the project required an understanding of adjacent talent markets and which commercial skills would transfer successfully into the new proposition.
New products create unusual recruitment problems. Businesses naturally want people with direct experience, but when a category is developing quickly, those people may barely exist. The better question is often: which experience actually matters, and which parts can be learned?
In Criteo's case, strong agency relationships, Adtech knowledge and commercial credibility could be more valuable than having exactly the right terminology on a CV.
That distinction opened up the market and allowed the team to be built at the pace the business required.
Ultimate Asset helps Adtech, Martech, SaaS and Emerging Media businesses identify the commercial talent capable of taking new propositions to market. Whether you're building a new function, entering a different category or scaling an existing commercial team, we can help you understand where the relevant talent sits and how to reach it.
When Vistar Media decided to establish its presence in Japan, the first hire was always going to matter. This was not simply about recruiting a senior salesperson. They needed someone capable of representing the business in-market, building credibility from day one and laying the foundations for future growth.
Ultimate Asset was retained to find that person.
Vistar Media is a global technology company specialising in digital out-of-home advertising.
As the business continued its international expansion, Japan represented an important new market. But entering it successfully required more than simply transferring an existing commercial model into a new region.
The business needed local leadership.
The brief from Ben Baker, Managing Director APAC, was clear: launch Japan.
The Country Manager would be a foundational appointment, responsible for establishing Vistar Media locally and building the relationships, credibility and commercial momentum needed to develop the market.
That created a relatively narrow candidate pool. The right person needed senior experience within digital advertising or Adtech, strong knowledge of the Japanese market and the ability to operate effectively within an international technology business.
Direct digital out-of-home experience was not essential. Finding someone with the right leadership qualities, commercial network and market reputation mattered more.
Rather than limiting the search to people already working directly within DOOH, we mapped the broader Japanese advertising technology ecosystem. That included senior leaders across platforms, DSPs, SSPs, publishers and adjacent technology businesses.
The focus was on identifying people with:
This broadened the available talent pool without weakening the brief.
At this level, the strongest candidates were unlikely to be actively looking. This was therefore a genuinely passive Executive Search.
The work centred on understanding the market, identifying the people with the right profile and then creating enough interest in the opportunity for them to consider leaving established positions.
Reputation also mattered heavily. For a foundational market-entry appointment, Vistar Media needed someone customers, partners and the wider industry would immediately take seriously.
Ultimate Asset ran a targeted retained search across the Japanese Adtech market. We mapped relevant businesses and senior leaders, assessed adjacent backgrounds and approached candidates directly.
The qualification process focused not only on commercial experience, but also on market standing, relationships, leadership style and whether each individual could realistically build Vistar Media's presence from the ground up.
Throughout the process we worked closely with Ben and the wider Vistar Media leadership team, helping calibrate the brief as market feedback developed and managing the search through interview and offer.
The search resulted in the appointment of Yosuke Maekawa as Country Manager, Japan.
Yosuke brought senior experience from the advertising technology ecosystem, strong local market relationships and the credibility required for a launch of this importance. His background gave Vistar Media someone capable of representing the company immediately while also building the longer-term commercial foundations of the Japanese business.
Vistar Media secured the senior leader it needed to establish the business in Japan.
More importantly, the search demonstrated why international market-entry appointments require a broader approach than simply looking for someone who has performed the same job before. The strongest answer came from understanding the ecosystem around the role and identifying the person whose experience, reputation and relationships best matched what the business needed to achieve.
International expansion often starts with one critical appointment. That first leader has to understand the local market, represent the business credibly and create the platform for everything that follows.
Ultimate Asset perspective
Our role in searches like this is to look beyond obvious job-title matches and identify the senior people capable of making that market entry work.
We help Adtech and technology businesses identify senior leaders for market-entry, commercial and executive appointments across the UK & Europe, North America and Asia.
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